Williams on parables

One of the aspects of Maurice Wiles’ thought that Williams appreciates in particular is his emphasis on parable. For his part, Williams proposes the intriguing idea of ‘parabolic speech’ as a catalyst for a new kind of life: for conversion. The parables that Jesus told have the capacity to tranform people’s perceptions: of themselves and of their communities.[mpj1] And indeed, his own life was a larger parable of the gospel of challenge and transformation. Jesus’ telling of parables and teaching his disciples how to receive them is a preparation for us of the pattern of loss and recovery of the self that we will see in his death and resurrection story. As Williams puts it:

The transfiguring of the world in Christ can seem partial or marginal if we have not learned, by speaking and hearing parables, a willingness to lose the identities and perceptions we make for ourselves: all good stories change us if we hear them attentively; the most serious stories change us radically....And if we can accept a very general definition of parable as a narrative both dealing with and requiring 'conversion', radical loss and radical novelty, it may not be too far-fetched to say that the task of theology is the exploration of parable, and so of conversion.[1]

Here in nuce is an explanation of what parables do, as Williams see them. They invite a certain kind of listening first of all: an attentiveness and receptiveness which requires patience and humility. The listener needs to divest him or herself of attempts to construct personal identity and prepare to be read by the story as much to read it. This is an ongoing and dynamic process of personal and societal change made possible by engagement with a very significant set of stories. The conversion process is never completed: there is no moment at which the even the believer can see him or herself as above the challenge of the parable. Williams focuses on what parables enact more than on what they may or may not say.[2] Doctrine alone will not protect us from becoming Pharisees, if we are not open to conversion.

In a telling passage, Williams describes the parables as ‘crystallizations of how people decide for or against self-destruction, for or against newness of life, acceptance, relatedness’.[3] Jesus presents his mini-narratives in the midst of situations and encounters in which the kingdom of God is sought after, or described. Christians do not of course read the parables in isolation, but rather as they have been enbedded in the life of the one who spoke them. They are parables which are identified by their association with the life of their author. They are ‘part of a life’ (p. 41). The parables are suggestive of a transformation in human affairs. They teach first the pattern of challenge and change, of loss and recovery, which then makes sense of the Easter events. This has its sense by contributing to the large parable of Jesus’ life, death and resurrection, events which show how the new thing of which the parables speak becomes ‘concretely possible’ (p. 41). In particular, the new thing that arises out of Jesus’ life is the new community, the church.

[1] Williams, "The Judgement of the World," p. 42.
[2] In another place he calls this ‘dramatic’ reading of the text, a notion for which he is indebted to Nicholas Lash. Rowan Williams, "The Discipline of Scripture," in On Christian Theology (Oxford ; Malden, Mass.: Blackwell,, 2000), p. 50.
[3] Williams, "The Judgement of the World," p. 41.