As I’d mentioned, I started attendance in seminary last Fall. I wrote my paper for my Introduction to New Testament class on Luke 16:1-13, The Parable of the Clever (or Unjust) Steward. Here, I’m going to share an abridged summary of the argument without all of the footnotes and references. Because this is an informal post rather than the formal paper itself, I’d ask you to pardon the ambiguities of statements like “some scholars say,” etc. If, after reading this post, you are interested in reading the paper in full or you’d like to see the specific sources and weigh their value yourself, please reach out to me and I’ll be happy to share the essay with you. Upon reading back through what I’ve written here, my initial feeling is that the paper itself is a bit more coherent, but hopefully you at least get the generel idea!

The passage is a short read, and I’d recommend a careful reading of the parable before continuing to my thoughts below. But, if you’re in a hurry or don’t want to shift from this text to another, here’s a short summary: There is a certain slave or servant of a rich man’s household who manages the rich man’s estate; he is accused of “squandering” the landlord’s property. In expectation of being dismissed from his position, and thinking himself unfit for manual labor, the servant summons forth the debtors of the estate and has the debtors reduce the amounts they owe to the landlord. The servant’s rationale is that these people may show him reciprocal hospitality when he has nowhere else to turn. The remained of the passage is worth repeating verbatim. Starting with verse 8 (ESV):

⁸The master commended the dishonest manager for his shrewdness. For the sons of this world are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than the sons of light. ⁹And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of unrighteous wealth, so that when it fails they may receive you into the eternal dwellings. ¹⁰“One who is faithful in a very little is also faithful in much, and oen who is dishonest in a very little is also dishonest in much. ¹¹If then you have not been faithful in the unrighteous wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches?¹²And if you have not been faithful in that which is another’s, who will give you that which is your own? ¹³No servant can serve two masters, for either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despite the other. You cannot serve God and money.”

The Parable of the Clever Steward appears only in the Gospel of Luke, sandwiched in between the parables of the Prodigal Son and Lazarus and the Rich Man, which some scholars argue places it at both the narrative and the metaphoric “center” of Luke’s Gospel. As I discovered upon beginning my own research, this is a passage that has confounded scholars and theologians since it was uttered; you’ll find a myriad of explanations or attempts at explanations, most or all of which are worth considering. As my readers know, I’m a proponent of the idea that accepting one reading of a Biblical passage does not mean that there’s not value and truth in alternative readings–I’ve argued that ambiguity is used to achieve just such a purpose, with the result of keeping the scriptures as a “living” text that continues to bring new insights as new perspectives or contexts are brought to it.

Sociohistorical Background

To make any sense of this text, we need to consider the background in which the parable was first spoken. That requires a lesson in historical economics. Before the advent of Alexander the Great and the introduction of Greco-Roman influence into Palestine, most of the Israelites and Judeans were smallholder farmers. They owned a plot of land, which they farmed with their family, and this provided enough sustenance and perhaps a little extra for trade. As subsistance farming is everywhere and at every time, life is tenuous–a poor harvest, general famine, or damage to crops by severe weather could devastate a family’s ability to support itself. During these times, the smallholder often needed to borrow money to survive. Under Mosaic law, property rights where inalienable on a permanent basis; if a smallholder borrowed money and failed to repay it, the creditor could potentially seize the property, but only for a matter of a few years before it had to be returned to the rightful owner. Debt forgiveness, whether or not related to the idea of the Jubilee, is too complex and debated a topic in the historical and theological study of the period to discuss in depth here, but we have reasonable assurance that, before the Greeks and Romans, permanent foreclosure was not a remedy available to creditors. This premise was not merely a legal one; it was a matter of the fundamental equality of God’s chosen people and of a need to preserve a socioeconomic system that protected that equality.

The Greco-Roman approach to economics and debt radically changed the nature of land ownership in the Galilee and Judea once introduced. The Greco-Roman system allowed creditors to permanently foreclose on and take ownership of real property to satisfy unpaid debts. Thus, by the time of Jesus, land ownership had transferred from myriad smallholder farmers to large estates held by the wealthy after lending to those farmers and then foreclosing on their property when they could not repay their debts. Initially, it had been monarchs who had consolidated land in this way, but the practice became available to private citizens over time.

I’m skipping over the long arguments, but here is a summary of relevant conclusions related to this reality (and subordinate portions of the parable):

• The debtors approached by the steward in the passage are most likely (given the size and type of the debts described) representatives of whole villages of tenant farmers who owe rents in kind to the landlord. These tenants (or, more likely, their ancestors) used to own the land they now work on behalf of the estate owner. Their debts are substantial and keep them in a form of serfdom.
• We do not know whether the estate owner is an indigenous wealthy person or a Greco-Roman “foreigner” in the Levant but, either way, the passage’s socioeconomic implication is that he disregarded the will of God regarding land ownership and alienation for his own personal gain. This understanding is essential to interpretation and comports with Luke’s almost universally-negative portrayal of the wealthy.

Two Masters

There is debate over where this parable ends, with some scholars arguing that it ends as early as verse 7 (with Jesus or the Lukan narrator stepping in in verse 8), at the end of verse 8 (if the estate owner is the “master” who speaks in verse 8), or at various points up to and including verse 13. Two well-respected scholars in the field (I.J. Du Plessis and Kenneth Bailey) argue that verses 10-13 were later appended to the parable because of the similar theme.

I disagree. Verse 13 is the only portion of the passage that appears in one of the other Gospels (Matthew 6:24). There’s room for debate here, and no way to conclusively prove Bailey and Du Plessis wrong, but my position is based primarily on three arguments: (1) That verse 13 appears elsewhere in the New Testament makes it more likely to be a genuine pericope spoken by Jesus. If that is so, it is more likely that verses 1-12 are intended to explicate that statement than that verse 13 were added because of a similar theme. (2) As I argue below, the inclusion of verse 13 transforms–or at least amplifies–the theme of the preceding parable in an essential way for it to make a cogent argument. (3) The linguistic and literary analysis of the passage as a whole indicates an ongoing question about who the master is within the story, and this question is never resolved without the “lens” provided in verse 13.

It is a dramatic twist that Jesus’ statement about serving two masters concludes the parable, because it requires us to retroactively re-evaluate everything we previously thought as we listened to the steward’s story. This technique enhances the impact of the revelation, reverses initial assumptions about the text, and reminds us that superficial understandings based on cultural expectations (at least for the modern reader) are not always the correct ones.

I suggest that you re-read the parable, but that you read verse 13 at the beginning instead of the end. When you do this, you are confronted with two masters between whom the steward must choose. Will he choose money, represented by the estate owner, or will he choose God, who lurks silently behind the scenes? The repetition of the word “master” (kurios in Greek) maintains this question at the forefront of the reader’s mind as she progresses through the story. Verse 8 accentuates this most emblamatically by raising the necessary question: “which ‘master’ is speaking here and approving of the steward?” The word kurios has been used to indicate the temporal master earlier in the passage, but it is also one the Gospels apply to Jesus in several different contexts. Close reading of the Greek results in a strong, if not unassailable, argument that it is the estate owner referenced in verse 8, but this does not mean that some scholars have not attempted to assail that argument anyway.

The focus, then, is on the steward’s choice in responding to the accusations against him–will he continue to uphold the “rights” of his master, the estate owner, or might he favor the will of God in showing preferential treatment to the poor and oppressed landowners and the society of equals that God wanted?

Of Squandering, Prodigal Sons, and Dives

We should note that the steward in this parable is only accused of squandering his master’s wealth. The difference is accentuated by the ordering of the passages by the Lucan author as well as the fact that, elsewhere in Luke (the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus that follows, the Parable of the Unjust Judge and the Persistent Widow in Luke 18), the writer has no qualms about clearly denouncing those who are not following God’s will. Since the squandering is described here as only an accusation, I think we ought to intrepret the passage as indicating the steward’s innocence. The word for “squandering” in this passage is the same word used for the Prodigal Son’s failings in the preceding parable, but there’s no doubt in that story that the son did squander the wealth he was given. It is possible that the “squandering” of which the steward has been accused is the exact same action we see him undertake in the parable–refusing to participate in the merciless extraction of all possible wealth from the master’s tenants.

Nevertheless, it’s important to note that the steward seems to beleive he will be removed from his position. The reason isn’t clear: Self-doubt and anxiety? A belief that someone else’s word might be taken over his (and over the evidence)? Or, maybe, he may not be “squandering” the master’s wealth, but he is doing something his master won’t like. I lean toward the last explanation, but it is somewhat undercut by the estate owner’s approval of the steward’s actions, as we’ll see.

The precedent of the prodigal son provides a contrast with the steward. Certain scholars want to contrast the steward with the prodigal son, but the steward, as we’ll see, is at the very least helping others as well as himself. The prodigal son is only interested in himself–Dr. Amy-Jill Levine, whose work and approach very much influence the writing of this paper, argues that we ought to view the prodigal son not as repentant refugee but as calculating con man rehearsing an insincere speech to manipulate his way back into his father’s good graces. But his father doesn’t even let him finish the speech before welcoming him home; I argue that the steward has more in common with the father’s magnanimity than the son’s waywardness.

On the other side of the Steward Parable is the Parable of the Rich Man and Lazarus. By tradition, the rich man is often called “Dives,” because this is the Latin word used for “rich” in the Vulgate. This is one of the more terrifying parables of the gospels, particularly if we take it literally. As with her other work in bringing us back to what the 1st-Century Judaean would have heard in the parables, Dr. Levine cautions against using the story as any real depiction of the afterlife. However, it does certainly serve as a warning to those of means who use their wealth only for themselves. In addition to depicting the general Lucan attitude to the wealthy (remember that the Beatitudes in Luke read, “Blessed are the poor,” not “Blessed are the poor in spirit” as in Matthew; compare with Mary’s thankfulness for God’s rebalancing of socioeconomic status in her Magnificat; scholars often refer to the “preferential treatment of the poor” in Luke), I think that this parable serves as the other side of the coin to the Clever Steward. Note some of the points of contact: (1) the steward hopes that his benevolent actions will “open doors” to others, while Dives uses his wealth to literally build a wall and gate to keep Lazarus out; (2) the speaker in 16:9 speaks of the “eternal dwellings” (sometimes translated as “blessed habitations”) in the steward’s parable, but Dives is separated from the blessed in the afterlife by a great, uncrossable gulf, an inversion of his earthly gate. In short, I believe Dives is a metaphorical illustration of what you get when you serve money rather than God.

Show Me the Money

Much debate has been had over the accounting for the reduction in debts given by the steward. Some scholars have proposed that the steward was charging fees and interest above his master’s rates for his own benefit, or that he forgos his commission for handling the transactions so as to make room for lower repayments. The historical evidence of these kinds of transactions (mostly form papyri in Egypt from about the same time) do not support these hypotheses. There is no evidence for compensation of the steward in commissions for handling his master’s transactions (and there’s a high likelihood he was enslaved by his master to boot), and the numbers don’t add up with the interest rates and fees for similar transactions of the time.

The short answer is that the likeliest scenario is that the steward is actually taking from his master and giving to the poor. There’s no money going into his pocket, so any reductions in repayments must necessarily subtract from the master’s profits. In short, it’s hard to get around the idea that the steward is, if indirectly, stealing from his master. There is an alternative, though. There is ample evidence for the period, including letters from Pliny, that discuss Roman estate owners engaging in partial voluntary loan forgiveness when dealing with their tenant farmers. Pliny argues that it’s more expensive to evict all the defaulting debtors and find new people to work the land and that, if you forgive some of the debt, it becomes likelier that the remainder gets paid voluntarily. This is advice I give to my own landlord clients as a real estate attorney; it’s fascinating to see that the exigent practicalities of the landlord/tenant relationship haven’t much changed in two milennia. So, we have room to believe that the steward’s actions in debt reduction benefit the master more than hurt the master; this is especially so considering the massive debts described.

But it’s possible that the steward is bestowing spiritual benefits upon the master as well as economic ones–whether the master acknowledges, understands, or wills it to be so. There’s even the possibility that the steward is stumbling into righteousness through his actions, even if he is mostly or entirely attempting to act in his own self interest. Anthony Giambrone’s article “‘Friends in Heavenly Habitations’ (Luke 16:9): Charity, Repentance, and Luke’s Resurrection Reversal,” in Revue Biblique makes the point that there is a certain amount of permissible self-interest in the pursuit of salvation, resurrection, and metanoia. Further, if we return to Dr. Levine’s Short Stories by Jesus, we see in her chapter on the Parable of the Pharisee and the Tax Collector an idea of collective righteousness or salvation. In American society, we tend to avoid thinking about corporate responsibility for anything (perhaps in any usage of the word “corporate”), but Dr. Levine points out that Judaic tradition had within it the idea that the righteousness of some members of the community could be imputed to the collective as a whole. We see Paul communicating a version of this idea (albeit on a smaller scale) in 1 Corinthians 7:14.

Houses of the Holy

I’m going to step outside the flow of things for a brief moment to address Luke 16:9b. I didn’t spend a lot of time on this somewhat cryptic phrase (the “eternal dwellings” or “habitations of the blessed”) in the paper, focusing instead on 16:8b and 16:9a, but I do want to provide a sort of gloss. There’s some debate about that the phrase in this passage is supposed to mean, but some easy connections can be drawn. First, the idea of dwellings refers back to “their houses” in 16:4, so we have a connection between the temporal and the eternal that fits nicely with the immediately preceding ideas. If we want to reach outside this passage (thus straying from strict Biblical interpretation into broader theology), we might look to Jesus’ statement in the later-written Gospel of John that “in my father’s house there are many mansions” (14:2). There is “in the air,” as it were, with thoughts of the afterlife at the time of the Gospels the concept of living space–and not just that, but home. If we go back to Luke, we can see an immediate parallel of Lazarus reclining in “the bosom of Abraham.”

The point I’d make here is that Jesus seems to be reinforcing the idea that the nature of the relationships we form now will have eternal consequences and that we will be held to account for our relationships–not only (or perhaps even primarily) our deeds. It’s important to note that this represents a definite shift in the context of the passage. What seems to at first be a lesson about money turns out to be about relationships, with “unrighteous wealth” only a means to an end. Dives would have done well to listen.

A Fool or a Change of Heart?

There is some debate about the identity of the “master” in Luke 16:8a, whether Jesus or the estate owner. The Greek word is kurios, which can rightfully be applied to the estate owner but which is also used in Luke to refer to Jesus in a number of different contexts. The ambiguity, I believe, is entirely purposeful; it reinforces the question about which master both the steward (and we) have chosen.

Close textual analysis makes it difficult indeed to argue that Jesus is the “master” intended in Luke 16:8a. So, we have the estate owner in 16:8a, the Lucan author commenting in 16:8b, and Jesus breaking in with 16:9 (“And I tell you…). This creates a problem for scholars, because it’s difficult to understand why the master would then praise the steward. As I mentioned above, this could be because the steward’s actions in engaging in limited debt forgiveness is the wise course, and the estate owner recognizes this. We could then read 16:8b in several ways: First, that the steward is a “son of this world” who nevertheless understands better than those who claim righteousness how to properly use money. Chapter 15 begins with Jesus telling the parables of the lost as a response to the criticisms of the Pharisees, so we could easily read the statement in 16:8b as another jab against them. If we want to take an alternative approach, we could read the steward as the “son of light” engaging in debt forgiveness for the purpose of benefitting the tenants (not thinking then about the business-oriented wisdom used by the Romans dealing with debtor tenants) and the master (the son of the world) realizing the practical wisdom that coincides with the spiritual wisdom excersized by his servant. There is also a third way: that the master’s praise is ironic–that he understands only the business acumen invovled in the debt forgiveness without seeing the spiritual truth spoken of by Jesus after the parable and practiced by the steward within it. There is much scholarship on the role of irony in this parable, and at least one interesting article that frames the steward as the classic “trickster servant” figure who pulls one over on his master (see just about any of Shakespeare’s comedies that involve servants for a more modern version of this trope–especially the Servant of Two Masters). I leave the possibilities open, because I think they area all able to lead to my conclusions.

Timid Interpretations and Complex Morality

My complaint about much–but certainly not all–of the scholarship and preaching about this parable is that it begins with a preconceived notion about Jesus and makes interpretative choices based on that concept rather than reading closely and carefully. That notion is that Jesus would never condone theft, as this would be immoral and therefore cannot be something Jesus would approve of. In turn, this approach leads to the rather facile interpretation that this passage is about “responsibility with money.” We have other parables that touch on that subject: the strange parables of the The Pearl of Great Value, The Hidden Treasure and The Rich Fool, as well as the parable of The Talents. But the Parable of the Clever Steward doesn’t follow the scheme of those other parables; it hews closer to the Parable of the Unforgiving Servant and the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard.

When we see in the passage money described as “unrighteous” we ought to read that the money here is unrighteous because of the way the estate owner acquired it in the first place. Given the Judaic background to the parable we began with, we can argue that the “theft” in this passage, if any, occurred when the estate owner stole the land that was rightfully the tenants’ and continues as he bilks them of the produce of that land. In such a reading, even if the steward is acting to the financial detriment of his earthly master, we could say that he is returning what was previously stolen, not committing a theft himself. If we want to take a less radical approach, we could argue that the righteous action of the steward in forgiving some of the debts still provides a financial benefit to the estate owner in the collection of the remainder and so we have a coincidence of right behavior and shrewd business tactics (though I, personally, am not inclined to let the estate owner off the hook so easily).

The choice that confronts the steward is not a simple one. It pits what modern society might term the “legitimate property interests” of the estate owner against the practical welfare of the tenants. Real moral choice is almost never black and white; it is often a prioritizing of competing reasonable interests rather than a matter of entire righteousness on one hand and entire evil on the other. As a Biblical example, think of Rahab. She lied to her countrymen to protect the scouts sent into Canaan, and this act was treated as righteouesness. Such an example forces us to nuance moral ideas about lying; we cannot read the Commandment simply as “do not lie;” we must read more narrowly as “do not bear false witness against your neighbor.”

There is little reason to believe that Jesus, as the supreme moral teacher, would approach morality in such a clumsy way as to use broad categorizations without appreciation for context. If this were the intentional teaching of scripture, it would fail to prepare us for moral action in the real world. So, we ought not say, “Jesus would never approve of theft.” We ought instead to ask, “Does Jesus tell us that there are times in which is it morally appropriate to consciously act against the financial or property interests of others?” This parable seems to argue in the affirmative to the latter question. When we interpret the passage through the lens of Luke 16:13 and the socio-economic-historical background in which the story is told, I think we get an image of wealth redistribution as a just action. Again, that idea must be kept in context and not carelessly allowed to be taken to the point of general applicability. We must note that the estate owner is not made destitute by wealth being taken from him and given to the poor. He’s not even losing enough that he has reason to be concerned, otherwise he would not have approved of the steward. If we want to ask further questions about the redistribution of wealth based on this passage, we get the sort of simultaneously simple and infinitely complex answer as when we are told to “love our neighbor as ourselves.” Who will you serve: money, or God?

As a further indication of the influence Amy-Jill Levine’s work has had on me, this reading seems to comport with her interpretation of the Parable of the Laborers in the Vineyard in Short Stories by Jesus, where she argues for that story to be read as an example of an economic system that places people over profits–an intepretation I certainly had in mind while researching and working on this paper.

In an age where the creation of the first trillionaire is within sight and yet we have millions of people starving to death or without access to adequate healthcare, even in supposedly “first-world” nations like the United States, where conservative Christians have coopted Jesus to prop up ultra-capitalism and the disparity of wealth to an egregious extreme, we would do well to wonder how we might strive for a more just society that prioritizes people over profits. Taking from the rich for the poor–while still leaving the rich with ridiculous amounts of wealth to the normal person anyway–seems like something Jesus might approve of.

In connection with this work, I have lately been thinking about the nature of God’s justice in the broader sense. I am coming to the conclusion that, if we look to scripture, we see that, when dealing with individual cases, God’s justice is about people getting what they need rather than what they deserve. I think that’s a difficult concept in a society like America with a justice system built around the idea of “righteous” vengeance. Which is not to say at all that God’s justice does not require us to oppose systems that exploit, subject, and oppress others; we are absolutely called to such action in the interest of loving our neighbors. But–and here’s the most difficult part–I think we’re called to find a way that simply does not demonize and call “enemy” the ones who stand behind such systems. I don’t know exactly how that works, but I expect the broader topic of justice to be a recurring theme in future posts.

Even in summarized form, this was a long post. If you’ve read to this point, I’d really ask you to leave a comment of some sort so that I know whether these kinds of posts have an audience. Again, if you want to read the paper proper–or just check my references, research and arguments, reach out and I’ll be happy to send you a copy of the paper itself.