There is a popular notion often seen in homiletics trade books that runs something like this: “We should use stories in our preaching and teaching in order to make the message clear. After all, Jesus often spoke in parables” (e.g., Robinson, 2014; Chapell, 2018). But this line is in tension with the straightforward reason Jesus himself offers for why he uses parables. Jesus says that he speaks in parables not to reveal the truth but to conceal it, as a fulfillment of prophetic judgment on those who reject him (Matt 13:10–15; Mark 4:10–12; Luke 8:9–10; cf. Isa 6:9–10). Only those who desire to know Jesus will seek the parable’s meaning (e.g., Matt 13:16). Still, that Jesus would purposefully conceal truth was strongly challenged in the twentieth century by leading scholarly voices (e.g., Dodd, 1961; Linnemann, 1966; Jeremias, 1972), who argued that Jesus’s statements about hiding truth in parables must represent a later redaction by the Christian community. Therefore, a difference of opinion persists among commentators as to whether Jesus used parables to make the truth simple or to make it less accessible.
This paper argues that that Jesus did indeed speak in parables to the masses intending for them to miss the meaning of his teaching because they had already rejected the clear, non-parabolic teaching of Jesus for most of his ministry. However, my thesis is that it was not the use of parables that blinded the hard-hearted and turned them away, but the use of uninterpreted parables that fulfilled Isaiah’s prophecy. When Jesus proclaims the parable of the sower, for example, he never offers an explanation to the crowds but leaves the words hanging to incite a thirst for truth among those of faith and a corresponding bewilderment among those who refused to believe. This view of Jesus’s approach can be defended in several ways, including his disciples’ alarm that Jesus had taken this new tack in his preaching (e.g., Matt 13:10), that they themselves did not appreciate the parable until they sought the meaning (e.g, Matt 13:36, 51), that the uninterpreted parables left the priests and Pharisees with a dimmed perception (e.g., Matt 21:45), and that, in using parables with his disciples, Jesus would include a clear interpretative key to guide their understanding.
After the introduction that includes an overview of current scholarly opinions on Jesus’s use of parables, the paper begins by establishing which dominical sayings we should actually identify as “parables,” first by isolating and examining only those sayings that are specifically called parabolē by Jesus or the evangelist. We can then identify other sayings as parables based on comparative analysis. It now becomes clearer that Jesus used parabolic sayings throughout his ministry, but toward the end made special use of uninterpreted parables to winnow the wheat from the tares through his preaching.
This paper contributes not only to a clearer understanding of Jesus’s use of parables in the Synoptic Gospels, but also to the discussion of the care we must take in our own use of parables or illustrations in communicating the gospel today. The paper also has implications for the perennial question of whether we can identify any use of parables in the Gospel of John.