Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction: Why don't Christians do dialogue?
- PART I CLASSICAL MODELS
- PART II EMPIRE MODELS
- PART III CHRISTIANITY AND THE THEOLOGICAL IMPERATIVE
- 6 Can we talk? Augustine and the possibility of dialogue
- 7 ‘Let's (not) talk about it’: Augustine and the control of epistolary dialogue
- PART IV CHRISTIANITY AND THE SOCIAL IMPERATIVE
- PART V JUDAISM AND THE LIMITS OF DIALOGUE
- Bibliography
- Index
6 - Can we talk? Augustine and the possibility of dialogue
from PART III - CHRISTIANITY AND THE THEOLOGICAL IMPERATIVE
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2009
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Notes on Contributors
- Introduction: Why don't Christians do dialogue?
- PART I CLASSICAL MODELS
- PART II EMPIRE MODELS
- PART III CHRISTIANITY AND THE THEOLOGICAL IMPERATIVE
- 6 Can we talk? Augustine and the possibility of dialogue
- 7 ‘Let's (not) talk about it’: Augustine and the control of epistolary dialogue
- PART IV CHRISTIANITY AND THE SOCIAL IMPERATIVE
- PART V JUDAISM AND THE LIMITS OF DIALOGUE
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
He said: A man prepared a great dinner, and invited many people, and at the time of the dinner he sent his slave to say to those invited, ‘Come, for everything is ready.’ And one after another they made excuses. The first said ‘I have bought some land and must go and look at it: please excuse me.’ Another said ‘I have bought five pairs of oxen and am on my way to try them out: please excuse me.’ Another said ‘I have married a wife, and for that reason I cannot come.’ The slave came back and told his master. Then the master of the house was angry, and said to the slave ‘Go quickly to the streets and the lanes of the city, and bring here the beggars and the cripples and the blind and the lame.’ The slave said ‘Master, your order has been carried out, and there is still room.’ The master said to the slave ‘Go out to the roads and the roadsides and make them come in, so that my house shall be full. I tell you that none of those men who were invited shall taste my dinner.’
(Luke 14: 16–24)The parables of Jesus have many applications, and this one can be applied in many ways to the relationship of dialogue and Christianity. First, the story: the host and his intended guests belong to the wealthy elite, for whom dinner parties are a normal mode of sociability.
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- The End of Dialogue in Antiquity , pp. 117 - 134Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2009
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