Parable of the Prodigal Son

The purpose of this research is to examine the reactions of the three main characters in the parable of the prodigal son in Luke 15. The plan of the research will be to set forth the broad outlines of the parable, and then to explore how the father, the elder son, and the prodigal son react in the course of the story and the degree to which such reactions may be regarded as universal. As well, reference will be made as appropriate to the teachings of Jesus Christ, the teller of the tale in Luke.

The prodigal is the younger wastrel son who asks for and squanders his inheritance on wantonness and debauchery. When he begins to suffer the consequences, he returns to his father, prepared to humble himself. In the event, showing himself is sufficient, for the father immediately forgives and feasts him. All this excites the envy of the well-behaved elder brother, and it falls to the father to assuage the elder's concerns on one hand and to essentially justify his attitude on the other. That justification summarizes not only the impulse behind the human reactions but also the relationship of the parable as a whole to the patterns of Christian thought: "Son, thou art ever with me, and all that I have is thine" (Luke 15:31). In this statement the father expresses the immutability of his grace and the enactment of unselfish love as the experience of grace. These themes achieve universality at both secular and religious levels.

The context for the parable suggests that Jesus ha

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pp. 100-103), who theorizes that in the 1970s, the running-away that had historically been seen as an individual's experience of life (such as in the prodigal parable), alienation, and reconciliation became something of a social (i.e., mass) phenomenon when the impulse to run away was given moral standing of breaking-away from traditional social norms. This may be distinguished from the prodigal's lust for a life of debauchery, but the fact of the runaway is nonetheless instructive as a modern interpretation of an ancient story. Tolbert (1977) analyzes the parable in Freudian terms, equating the id, ego, and superego more or less with the prodigal, the father, and the elder son, respectively. The prodigal's actions in running away, as well as in coming back, illustrate a host of tendencies toward the experience of life. The father's entire life can be seen as an exemplar of ego inasmuch as he asserts and preserves himself as an actor in the world; the prodigal, however, gradually pursues experience of life until (faced with famine) he comes to the point of understanding the meaning of self-preservation. The rigid figure of the elder son can be seen as the superego, or individual conscience on one hand and cultural conscience on t

Category: Philosophy - P