Luke 7: 36-50

New Critique Volume II pp.152-153
Under the heading "Love and the conventions of social intercourse" Dooyeweerd writes thus: "In the modal aspect of intercourse the social conventions have an inner anticipatory connection with love in its moral nuclear meaning.
This is clearly shown by Jesus Christ who contrasts the love of the prostitute who had anointed his feet with very costly spikenard, with the uncourtly attitude of the pharizee who had invited him but had omitted the eastern forms of courtesy towards the Rabbi of Nazareth. Jesus shows here that courtesy and social convention in ggeneral are not indifferent things. They should be directed and animated by love. Nevertheless the conventions of social intercourse as such are not to be reduced to morality in its original modal meaning-nucleus...."
The biblical scholar Kenneth Bailey in his literary-cultural interpretation of the parables Through Peasant Eyes (Eerdmans 1980) develops his explanation of the parable of the two debtors (pp.1-21) in a way that is consistent with Dooyeweerd's interpretation and reference to Simon's neglect of "eastern customs."