Helmut Kuhn offers an exposition of this parable that, while certainly going beyond the literal sense of the text, nonetheless succeeds in conveying its radical message. He writes: “The love of friendship in political terms rests upon the equality of the partners. The symbolic parable of the Good Samaritan, by contrast, emphasizes their radical inequality: The Samaritan, a stranger to the people, is confronted with the anonymous other; the helper finds himself before the helpless victim of a violent holdup. Agape, the parable suggests, cuts right through all political alignments, governed as
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