Luke 16:1-13 have a theme of the role of money and wealth in our lives and in the broader context of Luke have an eschatological context. Here is a tough passage.
Luke 16:1-8a is the parable of the dishonest manager. The source is the material unique to Luke.[1] In the context of Luke, Luke 16:1-13 occurs midway in Luke’s 10-chapter description of Jesus’ journey from Galilee to Jerusalem. The journey, the road, serves as a universal archetype of the quest for the good life. In this section, Luke emphasizes Jesus’ teaching on discipleship, which makes this parable of the dishonest steward all the more surprising. The parable, addressed to the disciples, follows three parables addressed to the Pharisees and scribes (15:1-32). The manager’s forgiveness of debts, albeit illegal, serves as a touchstone with these teachings. At the same time, the manager’s initial profligacy of his master’s goods and later clever use of the same assets to secure his future serve as an introduction to the parable of Lazarus and the rich man who misuses his resources (16:19-31). Thus, while this parable is very compelling on its own, its placement also displays the artful, conscious construction of Luke. In this reading, the remainder of the text, verses 8b-13, serves as commentary on the parable.
Whatever hermeneutical schema one adopts, the eschatological thread that ties together the parables of Luke 15 and 16 is difficult not to notice. The shepherd recovers the "sheep that was lost" and there is "joy in heaven" (15:6-7). The woman finds the lost coin and invites her neighbors to celebrate the recovery -- even as the "angels of God" rejoice over the sinner who enters the kingdom (15:10). The Prodigal Son returns and is received into the welcoming arms of his father, to great rejoicing (15:20-24). The steward's overarching concern is for his future well-being, which he attempts to secure using ethically impermissible means (16:1-13). Finally, in the story of the Rich Man and Lazarus (which one can neatly juxtapose with the Rich Man and the Unjust Steward), it is the rich man who fails to use his fortune in a way that secures his eternal salvation while the poor man finds eschatological solace in the bosom of Abraham (16:19-31).
This text contains -- on the face of it -- one of the most difficult and embarrassing sayings in Scripture, offering an exegetical conundrum which challenges even the ablest of interpreters: "Make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes" (v. 9). The fourth-century Roman emperor Julian the Apostate and others cited this text in an attempt to discredit Christianity as a religion of scoundrels. Marxist interpreters have seen in this story a leitmotif for the proletariat struggle against the ruling capitalist class. We do not see Jesus in direct conflict with the economic relationships and obligations of his time and background. Jesus seems to accept with uncritical equanimity the existence of free employers of labor and employees dependent on their good will. We see that here. To the dismay of some, we do not see anything here that would support the notion of socialism as the best route for economic arrangements.[2] Lloyd J. Ogilvie said, “There is no parable with as many enticing dead-end possibilities as this one.”[3] The text has been called a "notorious puzzle" and an example of Jesus' humor and sarcasm. One scholar describes the enormous literature on this text as a "jungle of explanations."[4] I will attempt to wind my way through the jungle.
Then Jesus said to the disciples, “There was a rich man who had a manager, and charges were brought to him that this man was squandering his property. A rich landowner, no doubt an absentee landlord, acts on the suspicion that the administrator of his business affairs has squandered and embezzled his fortune. "Squandering" suggests the steward's poor performance at the job was costing his master money. 2 So he summoned him and said to him, ‘What is this that I hear about you? Give me an accounting of your management, because you cannot be my manager any longer.’ In the context provided by Luke, we could consider the manager as someone like the lost sheep, coin, and son in Luke 15. He deserves dismissal. Instead, he loses only his position. The landlord summons the accused office and requires him to turn over the books, and quite sensibly the master dismisses his inefficient manager. The steward has not even one word to say in his defense. The implication is clearly that the charges are substantially true. The original audience would have recognized the dire circumstances in which the manager found himself. 3 Then the manager said to himself, ‘What will I do, now that my master is taking the position away from me? I am not strong enough to dig, and I am ashamed to beg. Clearly panicked at his unexpected reversal of fortune, the unfortunate administrator, like the prodigal son of chapter 15, at first does not know how to proceed. The manager, however, seems to take this as the equivalent of dismissal, reflected in his acknowledgment of an incapacity to “dig,” to engage in manual labor. He lacks the physical stamina for hard labor (which was, in any case, universally abhorred as a way to earn a living). He develops his own plan to secure his future. Fortunately, his master has not remanded him over to the authorities to be shut up in the debtors' tower nor has he been sold into slavery. 4 I have decided what to do so that, when I am dismissed as manager, people may welcome me into their homes.’ Like the son who came to his senses in Luke 15, we may well have here the primary point of the parable. Regardless of the morals of the manager or the landowner, this man, in a moment of crisis, decided what to do in order to secure his future. While many parables offer different aspects of his message of the rule of God and its nearness, this parable focuses upon the need for decision.[5] While the narrative recounting of his thinking is that the manager expects the debtors to be grateful enough to him to support him should he be dismissed, a more realistic assessment would be that the debtors would be loath to associate with a manager dismissed by one of their own patrons. They would need to calculate the benefit from continuing loyalty to the manager against potential antagonism of his former employer. Perhaps they could gain some advantage from understanding the inner workings of the household but this expertise would wane quickly as new management came in and instituted new practices. The manager’s loss of position means that his answer to the inevitable question “What have you done for me lately?” sadly would be “not much.” The manager seems, if nothing else, clear and realistic about his prospects. His goal, it would seem, is to restore himself to the full position. 5 So, summoning his master’s debtors one by one, he asked the first, ‘How much do you owe my master?’ 6 He answered, ‘A hundred jugs of olive oil.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill, sit down quickly, and make it fifty.’ 7 Then he asked another, ‘And how much do you owe?’ He replied, ‘A hundred containers of wheat.’ He said to him, ‘Take your bill and make it eighty.’ Taking advantage of his free time, he contacts his "master's debtors" before they catch wind of his dismissal and reduces what was no doubt the interest portion of their debt, a reduction that amounted to as much as 50 percent. Although Jewish monetary laws usually forbade interest, there were convenient loopholes frequently utilized by the unscrupulous. Some have suggested that what the steward is doing is subtracting his own usurious profit from the actual amounts the master is owed. For many years, scholars have recognized that the commercial agrarian practices of antique Palestine inform this parable. From this, one can deduce that the most probable audience for the parable, and perhaps the group from which it arose, was the agrarian workers of Galilee. This group had suffered loss of property and status as during this period small land holdings were expropriated by the powerful and the status of the small independent farmer reduced to a tenant farmer. We also know that a customary practice of lenders, perhaps to avoid appearing to charge usury, was to write debt obligations to include the whole amount that would be due without explicitly differentiating the principal from the interest. The total would also include any charges that the manager, acting as an intermediary, might have added.[6] If one accepts this, then the action of the manager in writing down the amount on the debtors’ receipts may have eliminated any or all the manager’s own markup, as well as some or all of the interest that would have accrued to the master. Understandably, his actions are extremely popular, and he rightly believes that in his own hour of need, these people whom he has befriended, however unethical his behavior, will remember him favorably. The plan is a stroke of genius because it accomplishes a three-fold goal: First, the rich landowner is glorified and praised in the minds of his debtors for his apparent generosity. This offbeat but compelling reading of the parable recognizes these complexities and suggests that the manager has outwitted his master.[7] In this reading, the manager indeed eliminated the interest portion of the debt charged contrary to the biblical commandments. By doing so, he has enhanced the master’s reputation for piety and fair dealing. More importantly from his perspective, he has placed the master in a dilemma. Is it better to assert lordly authority over the household staff (all of whom must have been aware of the manager’s maneuverings) by dismissing or demoting the manager, but to threaten his newfound reputation for piety; or, on the other hand, should he protect his reputation for piety but endanger his control over the household by retaining the manager in his current position? In the latter option, there surely also would be increased ties to the master from those who have had their debts reduced. Second, in this interpretation, the worldly lot of his neighbors has improved. Third, the steward has provided for his own future economic security, i.e., his salvation! In his own way, however deceitful or ingenious, the dishonest steward has achieved aims which characterize love of God, love of neighbor and love of self.[8] The story does not end with the dishonest steward, however, but with his master's revised opinion of him.8a And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly. Incredibly, the rich landowner marvels at his steward's ingenuity and praises him for it. He is like the father who welcomed the home the son who squandered his inheritance. I am not sure that the owner is more scandalous than the father at this point. The amazing thing about this story is the rich man's reaction to the scheme. He does not get mad, as we would expect of him. Instead, he actually commends the steward for his shrewdness, as much as to say, "Well, I've got to hand it to you. You really know how to take care of yourself!" Now you and I know, of course, that such a thing would never happen - no boss is going to be happy with a dishonest employee. So, what is this story doing in the New Testament anyway? Jesus told it because it is an exceptionally good picture of you and me. Not that we are cheaters or social parasites living off our friends. Jesus told this parable because it portrays how shrewd we are. We know how to get along in the world, do we not? We know how to turn things to our advantage.[9]
One plausible interpretation suggests that Jesus implicitly identifies the landowner with God. In this case, the parable is more about what the landowner does than what the manager does. The master not once, but twice provides for the salvation of his steward. First, he has refused to throw him in prison, and second, in his grace, he applauds the shrewdness by which the manager has accomplished so much with so little. Note, however, that the master praises the steward because he has acted cleverly, not because he has acted dishonestly. Still, it is God's business to forgive and approve whom he will. We cannot condemn the manager if in fact his master refuses to do so. However, one straightforward attempt at interpretation suggests seeing the master’s comments as praise for the steward's genuinely clever, albeit conniving, solution to his problems. The final statement of the master suggests that the master has chosen to maintain his status with his fellow masters and retain the manager. The manager has succeeded: His position will be restored. With that as the conclusion of the parable, there has been the reversal of fortune which is common to parables: The manager who was under suspicion at the start of the parable is now back in the good graces of his master. The master is not commending dishonesty but recognizes a criminal genius in the steward's actions. The parable itself is intriguing. The absentee rich landowner commends the manager for his shrewdness in collecting outstanding receivables, even at discount rates. The parable acknowledges the dishonesty of the manager. Yet his master commends him for his shrewdness. It does not moralize. It does not commend crooked dealing or encourage embezzlement and false accounting. It does commend the manager for his shrewdness in the management of his worldly affairs, even under dubious circumstances. Such praise acknowledges that human life has its goals and objectives in which Christians participate.[10] We get the idea that the children of this world may be wiser in understanding human nature than children of light. The children of this world can be more human and knowing more about humanity than foolish and inhuman Christians. Christians can be, to use the popular phrase, so heavenly minded that they are of no earthly good. Spiritual matters can become so much the focus of one’s life that one forgets that one must still live on this earth.[11]
Here is an interesting encounter with a successful person in business.
I had a good visit with one of America's most successful businessmen on a cross-country flight recently. He had risen from a very humble background to immense wealth. I asked him the secret of his success. His response was very interesting. "Shrewdness!" was his one-word reply. I was shocked by his frankness. He went on to say that he spent every waking hour thinking, scheming, planning, developing and putting deals together. In it all he had tried to be completely honest in all his affairs! I couldn't help but admire his single-mindedness. He knew what he wanted and left nothing to chance. He worked hard to achieve his goals. All the power of his intellect, the strength of his seemingly limitless energies, the determination of his iron will and the resources of his calculated discernment of people were employed to accomplish his goals. Later, Ogilvie mused what could happen if the people of God put the same sort of "shrewdness" to work for the kingdom of God.[12]
Sometimes, I have been amazed the lengths to which people will go to get through life by dishonest means. One of the first times I remember thinking about this was when I was an associate pastor at Meridian Street UMC. We had a substantial amount of aid we could give to people who were in need. It was enough that people made appointments with me. We had certain rules, of course. Sometimes, it felt like we were really helping a person or family over a rough spot. Too often, however, people had quite clever stories. After a few questions, I could tell that they had learned the ropes in Indianapolis of how to get money out of every organization they could. They were crafty. They had a certain type of ingenuity. I wondered how much time they spent on developing their story. I also wondered what would happen in their lives if they would direct all that ingenuity and creativity toward something productive and that met a need in the lives of others. Yes, people can be creative, crafty, and ingenious, when it serves their purposes. What would you say if I told you that followers of Jesus were to be like that?
One of baseball’s great players — a contender in the home-run record sweepstakes, the Chicago Cubs’ Sammy Sosa — had hit over 500 career home runs when he broke his bat during a game on June 2, 2003. According to Sports Illustrated (June 10, 2003), the bat had been drilled out to make it lighter and filled with cork to muffle the hollow sound when bat connected with ball. Sosa called the incident a misunderstanding, claiming that he had “accidentally” grabbed a corked bat that he used during practice. I am not sure if what Sammy said was true. I would have to trust some of my baseball friends on that one. However, it has the appearance of being crafty. What would you say if I told you that followers of Jesus needed to be like that?
I hope this story brings a little smile. A mathematician, an accountant and an economist apply for the same job. The job interviewer calls in the mathematician and asks, “What does two plus two equal?” The mathematician replies, “Four.” The interviewer asks, “Four exactly?” The mathematician looks at the interviewer incredulously and says, “Yes, four exactly.” Then the interviewer calls in the accountant and asks the same question: “What does two plus two equal?” The accountant says, “On average, four — give or take 10 percent — but on average, four.” Then the interviewer calls in the economist and poses the same question: “What does two plus two equal?” The economist gets up, locks the door, closes the shade, sits down next to the interviewer, and says, “What do you want it to equal?” What would you say if I told you that followers of Jesus needed to be like the economist?
Here is another story to bring a smile. Two accountants are in a bank when armed robbers burst in. While several of the robbers take the money from the tellers, others line up the customers, including the accountants, and proceed to take their wallets, watches, etc. While this is going on, the first accountant jams something into the second accountant’s hand. Without looking down, the second accountant whispers, “What is this?” The first accountant replies, “It’s that $50 I owe you. What would you say if I told you that followers of Jesus are to be like that first accountant?
I am not suggesting that Christians should admire what they did. However, I wonder if we who would like to make a difference in the world for good could learn something from such folks. They have made a decision regarding what was important to them. They have committed themselves fully to it. They are willing to spend much thought and energy toward doing what they are doing to get ahead. What if we were willing to be every bit as decisive, crafty, ingenious, and focused as they are, but on being a disciple of Jesus Christ in this world?
Luke 16:8b-12 are two sayings that apply the parable of the dishonest manager. The source material is Luke in verses 8b-9, 10-12. If Jesus spoke these proverb-like sayings, he likely did so in a different context than that of the parable of the dishonest manager. Rather, Luke inserted theme here to provide moral instruction on the parable itself. The sayings cast Jesus in the role of the management trainer, and indeed, more than a few of the "children of this age" have regrettably seen in Jesus' leadership style a model for the postmodern CEO.[13] Thus, scholars generally understand these verses as later editorial additions that sought to accomplish much the same thing as all biblical scholarship since - to explain the meaning of this most difficult parable and to make the unjust steward into a more comfortable model of Christian integrity and service. The sayings soften and moralize the parable of the dishonest steward. He either drew upon earlier tradition or composed it himself.
Luke 16:8b-9 are a statement on ill-gotten gain. 8 And his master commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly; for the children of this age are more shrewd in dealing with their own generation than are the children of light. 9 And I tell you, make friends for yourselves by means of dishonest wealth so that when it is gone, they may welcome you into the eternal homes (tents, only use here in New Testament). Christians can learn something from the children of this world about dealing with the present generation. Rather, Jesus pointedly observes that the "children of this age" are more adept at dealing with their own generation than are the so-called "children of light." Jesus suggests that being a little streetwise might be a good thing. Linked closely to this eschatological emphasis of Luke 15-16 is economics: "Children of light" will evaluate their possessions considering the coming rule of God, an appraisal which inevitably leads to using wealth in the service of the poor and needy. You see, that is just the point - that none of the things that we are good at doing, put us right with God or win for us his abundant and eternal life. We are very shrewd and able people, but we are not shrewd enough to realize that is not all there is to human life.[14]
Some scholars prefer to view the interpretation of the parable in these verses through the lens of irony. We better understand the comments of Jesus as an example of irony in which Jesus says in fact the precise opposite of his meaning. He may have said, "You are such a clever fellow, deceiving your master to feather your future nest, currying favor now to gain favors later; you are so much smarter than children of light. So go ahead and make these kinds of friendships, continue in your deceitful ways, and accumulate dishonest wealth if, by your own admission, it is going to secure your entrance into the kingdom" -- but Jesus' actual meaning could not be further from the truth.[15]
Luke 16:10-12 is a saying on trust in trivial matters. 10 “Whoever is faithful in a very little is faithful also in much; and whoever is dishonest in a very little is dishonest also in much. 11 If then you have not been faithful with the dishonest wealth, who will entrust to you the true riches? 12 And if you have not been faithful with what belongs to another, who will give you what is your own? These verses shift from eschatology to day-to-day faithfulness, summing up the role of fidelity in Christian life. Jesus observes in the second part of this passage a principle of human nature. One can trust those who are faithful in little things with greater responsibility. Those, on the other hand, who are dishonest in small matters will be dishonest in large ones. Jesus goes even further: If one cannot manage "dishonest wealth," who would be willing to entrust legitimate riches to his stewardship? If you cannot be faithful with what does not belong to you, who "will give you what is your own?" (v.12). What the Christian life should be: working at being faithful in unimportant things so we can also be faithful in big things.
Back in 1889, John Hunter, a Scottish Congregational pastor, penned a few lines about the gap between the Christian profession and practice, which he later published as a hymn. What is encouraging about his treatment of the subject, however, is that it isn’t about a guilt trip but about continuing to follow the light of Jesus. His hymn is “Dear Jesus, in Whose Life I See”:
Dear Jesus, in whose life I see
all that I would, but fail to be,
let thy clear light forever shine,
to shame and guide this life of mine.
Though what I dream and what I do
in all my weak days are always two,
help me, oppressed by things undone,
O thou whose deeds and dreams were one!
Luke 16:13 and Matthew 6:24 is a saying on serving two masters. The source is Q and Thomas. In the context, Luke thinks of the saying as related to the parable of the unjust steward, summing up a general attitude toward wealth. However, as suggested by the context in Matthew, the aphorism may have had single-mindedness as its original point.
We can note the three-step argument of the saying. First, 13 No slave can serve two masters, for it creates an impossible situation. Second, the result of the impossible situation is divided loyalty, for a slave will either hate the one and love the other, or be devoted to the one and despise the other. Third, consequently, one must make a choice: You cannot serve God and wealth.” In context, this conclusion gives the proverb an unconventional twist. The popular view was that prosperity was a sign of divine favor. In this saying, Jesus may have encouraged the poor while at the same time challenged the rich. The saying is terse, pithy, and memorable. Choosing between serving God and serving money is the most pointed polarity of this passage. Apathy to a servant’s master is not an option. Hatred and love, devotion and despising are the language used here. In a striking way, the passage puts God and money on opposite sides of the spectrum of service. The oneness of God and the love of God with all that one is becomes the basis for the divine claim upon our lives for exclusive loyalty in our personal lives. [16] Confronted by revelation of the God of Israel, and our embrace of that revelation by faith, we recognize that everything has changed. The times and seasons have changed for us. We recognize that we now have our brief time on this earth only in God.[17]
In the Greek text of Matthew, the final word of this verse is an Aramaic word, mammon, meaning wealth or money. For Greek readers of Matthew, the use of Aramaic may have had an intensifying effect. It calls for them to see money in a different light, showing the negative ways in which it could be a master. God and money are the only choices, seeking the loyalty of those who will serve them. The word mammon appears in both the Greek original and this English translation as a loan word from either Hebrew or, more likely, Aramaic. There is wide agreement among lexicographers that the word denotes “property” or “wealth.” There are examples of its use with those meanings in both the Dead Sea Scrolls and in the Mishnaic Hebrew of later rabbis. The disagreement arises regarding its connotations. Are condemnations of “property” and “wealth” as evil implicit in this word that are lacking from other Hebrew and Aramaic words used to refer to “property” and “wealth”? It refers to the sum of the material possessions that distinguish one person from another, but by implication, it is no less certainly the sum of all such possessions. It includes the enjoyment of the authority and power exercised by such possessions.[18] Some dictionaries point out that there are much later uses of the word in figures of speech employing personification (as may be the case here in the conjoining of “God and mammon”) where it becomes a proper name for the demon “Mammon.” In those contexts, authors clearly condemn “mammon” in and of itself. Other dictionaries, however, question whether such a negative association applies already in its use in the first century. The only other occurrences of the word in the New Testament are in Luke, where it appears three times. Luke 16:13 is an exact parallel of Mathew 6:24, but Luke has already used the word twice in preceding verses (Luke 16:9 and 11) with the modifier “dishonest,” or perhaps “unjust” or “unrighteous” (adikia). Clearly, then, in the passage from Luke the word mammon has strongly negative connotations. However, one could argue that Luke must form those strongly negative connotations by twice using expressions meaning “dishonest wealth” because the word “mammon” was more neutral.
Service is the basic determination that in the New Testament makes the disciple a disciple, the apostle and apostle, and the Christian a Christian, whether as douloV or diakonoV. They express in their own ways, but in ways in which their meanings are remarkably close and merge into each other. The latter meant a servant, assistant, or waiter. A Christian must have such an attitude in relation to the Lord. Quite early, it described an office in the church, the deacon. The former word refers to one who is the property of the master. It emphasizes the personal nature of the relationship of dependence in which the slave finds himself or herself in relation to the master. This passage speaks of the impossibility of being a slave to two masters. In other contexts, one can become a slave to sin, Law, elemental spirits, mammon, the belly, and wine.[19]
Belonging
Is a human longing.
It once secured us to
Our mothers
And later
Moves us toward others.
Aloneness can be such a fear
That we become less cautious
About who we are near.
Who we choose to follow
Is akin to deciding
What to swallow.
—David A. Reinstein, LCSW,
[1] In the interpretation of this parable, people have continuing discomfort with a story in which Jesus seems to praise a dishonest household manager. This unease becomes more complex by the question of exactly where the story of the steward ends and where commentary on the story begins. If the story ends with verse 7, then the “master” in verse 8a is understood to be Jesus commenting on the moral of the story. On the other hand, if the story continues through verse 8a, then the speaker in verse 8a would be the rich man, offering his own rueful commentary. English translations of the New Testament start with the Greek text produced by a committee of scholars charged with reconstructing the wording of the earliest texts. The very earliest texts were all in capital letters without spaces between words and with little indication of verses and chapters. Consequently, there is no sure way to know how the original author intended the ambiguity of the ending to be resolved. The NRSV and the New American Standard Bible add the possessive pronoun “his” to their translations of verse 8a, emphasizing their conclusion that the person speaking is the rich man, the lord of the steward. The Greek text does not have the pronoun in it and other English translations (e.g., Revised Standard Version, King James, New American) omit the “his.” John Dominic Crossan in his classic work on parables concludes that because it is hard to imagine the master commending the servant who robbed him, the original parable, that is, the parable that was known to Jesus and his disciples, probably ends at verse 7 with verse 8a appended later.[1] In that case, it is Jesus, the Lord, who “commended the dishonest manager because he had acted shrewdly . . .” (v. 8a). Nevertheless, scholarly consensus now favors concluding the parable with verse 8a so the master of the servant commends him. With verse 8a as the conclusion, we do not face the problem of Jesus himself praising the dishonest servant. (For a good review of the literature, see Dennis J. Ireland, "A History of Recent Interpretation of the Parable of the Unjust Steward," Westminster Theological Journal, 51 [1989], 293-318.) (See Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J., The Gospel According to Luke [X-XXIV] Anchor Bible Library, v. 28a [Doubleday: Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday 1985], 1094-99; Daniel Lys, “Les Richesses injustes,” Études Théologiques et Religieuses 76 (no. 3) 2001, 391-98, is particularly persuasive in his analysis of the levels of the parable; also John L. Topel, “On the injustice of the unjust steward: Luke 16:1-13,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 37 [April 1975], 216-27, particularly 216-18.)
[1] (Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J., The Gospel According to Luke [X-XXIV] Anchor Bible Library, v. 28a, 1098-99).
[2] Barth, Church Dogmatics IV.2 [64.3] 174.
[3] Lloyd John Ogilvie, Autobiography of God, (1979, p. 200)
[4] (For a good review of the literature, see Dennis J. Ireland, "A History of Recent Interpretation of the Parable of the Unjust Steward," Westminster Theological Journal, 51 [1989], 293-318.)
[5] Pannenberg, Systematic Theology, Volume 2, 333.
[6] (Joseph A. Fitzmyer, S.J., The Gospel According to Luke [X-XXIV] Anchor Bible Library, v. 28a, 1098-99).
[7] (Paul Trudinger, “Ire or irony? The enigmatical character of the parable of the dishonest steward [Luke 16:1-13],” The Downside Review 116 [April 1998], 85-102).
[8] (For more on this line of thought, see Marcus Barth, "The Dishonest Steward and His Lord: Reflections on Luke 16:1-13," in From Faith to Faith, ed. Dikran Y. Hadidian [Pittsburgh: Pickwick Press, 1979], 65-73.)
[9] (Elizabeth Achtemeier, from "On Being Wise in This Generation.")
[10] Barth, Church Dogmatics III.4 [55.3], 529.
[11] Barth, Church Dogmatics III.2 [45.2] 276.
[12] Lloyd John Ogilvie, Autobiography of God (Glendale, Calif.: GL Regal Books, 1979), 199.
[13] (For example, Laurie Beth Jones, Jesus: CEO [Hyperion, 1996].)
[14] (Elizabeth Achtemeier, from "On Being Wise in This Generation.")
[15] (See P.G. Bretscher, "The Parable of the Unjust Steward -- A New Approach to Luke 16:1-9," Concordia Theological Monthly, [1951], 22; D.R. Fletcher, "The Riddle of the Unjust Steward: Is Irony the Key?" Journal of Biblical Literature, 82 [1963]; Stanley E. Porter, "The Parable of the Unjust Steward: Irony Is the Key" in The Bible in Three Dimensions, ed. D. Cline, et al. [1990], 127-153).
[16] Pannenberg (Systematic Theology, Vol. I, 445)
[17] Barth (Church Dogmatics, I.2 [14.1) 67)
[18] Barth (Church Dogmatics IV.2 [64.3] 169)
[19] (Church Dogmatics, IV.3 [71.4] 602-3)
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