Commenting on Luke 4:1-13 (cf. Mark 1:12-13; Matt 4:1-11) and Jesus’
temptation in the wilderness by Satan, Joseph Fitzmyer wrote the following,
arguing that the “tempter” was external
to Jesus:
It is, of course,
possible to read such an episode as an apologetic explanation that arose in the
early church to explain why Jesus never performed miracles on his own behalf or
why he failed to respond to the sign-seeking challenges of his contemporaries
who so confronted him in his ministry. Even if one were to admit a grain of
truth in such an apologetic explanation, it is unsatisfactory in the long run.
The text, neither in Matthew nor in Luke, ever presents these scenes as an appearance of Satan to Jesus, in a sort
of ecstatic vision. We are merely told that he was tempted by the devil. In
this regard, these scenes differ from the vision that Jesus has of Satan’s fall
in 10:18.
Yet many modern commentators try to root the temptations of Jesus is his real-life experience. J. Dupont and others have sought to root them in the requests made of Jesus during his ministry for signs of his authority. Dupont has tried to steer an idle course between a naïve literalist interpretation of the scenes and a parabolic explanation of them, often proposed by others, which we regard as “entirèment fictive.” He concludes, “Jesus speaks of an experience which he lived through, but translates it into figurative language, suited to strike the minds of his listeners.” For Dupont it would be a “purely spiritual dialogue” that Jesus would have had with the devil. I too would root these experiences of Jesus in his own public life and ministry, but I am not sure that a parabolic explanation of the origin of the scenes is necessarily “entirely fictitious” or that they have to be explained only in terms of a purely spiritual dialogue that would have been somehow translated.
Not only do the three
Synoptic evangelists portray Jesus as tempted by the devil, but certain verses
in the Johannine Gospel also reflect a tradition about trials that Jesus faced:
6:15 (they come to take him and make him a king), 6:26-34 (the people ask him
to give them “this bread always”), 7:1-4 (the reaction of certain Judeans and
of his own “brothers” to him). R.E. Brown has studied this aspect of the Fourth
Gospel. Moreover, the Epistle to the Hebrews makes much of the fact that Jesus
was subject to temptation and weakness (4:15; 5:2; cf. 2:17a). Such references
in the New Testament clearly speak of the reality of temptation in Jesus’ life,
even though they are, unfortunately, unspecified. Brown has noted this and
suggests, that “Mt and Lk (or their common source) would be doing no injustice
to historic fact if they dramatized such temptations within one scene, and
unmasked the real tempter by placing these enticements directly in his mouth.”
Whether one prefers Dupont’s “figurative language” or Brown’s “dramatization,”
or earlier commentators’ “parabolic interpretation,” one is closer to the
correct explanation of the temptation scenes than that of a naïve literalism.
These scenes depict temptations coming to Jesus from an external source;
they do not suggest that he is dealing with an inner psychological crisis or
personal conflict. They symbolize rather in their own way
the effect that was made on him by the “trials” of his ministry, the hostility,
opposition, and rejection that he encountered continually throughout it. Such
trials were real enough in his life and constituted the basis of his personal reaction
to them. Should he use his power to react to them? Would he thus prove
unfaithful to his Father’s call?
Without regarding
these stories ass ipsissima verba
Iesu, I should suggest that they may nevertheless be a way that Jesus
himself summed up in figurative, dramatic, or parabolic language and expressed
his experience to his disciples. These “trails” had been for him a form of
diabolic seduction, tempting him to use his power to change stones to bread and
to manifest himself with éclat. He would have recounted his experience to his
disciples in such a threefold parabolic manner, and thus they would not have
had only a fictitious origin.
The basis for such an
interpretation of the temptation scenes is found in the Lucan Gospel itself.
The Lucan temptation episode ends significantly with the clause, kai syntelesas panta peirasmon, “having
exhausted every (sort of) temptation,” the devil departed (4:13). Thus, the
three scenes stand symbolically for all the “temptations” that he had
experienced. Jesus as Son has stood the test; he has been tested in his
fidelity to his Father and been found faithful.
But there is more:
the testing of Jesus by the devil thus invests his trials with a cosmic
dimension, as the baptism scene had done for his ministry as a whole. For the
temptation of Jesus is not recounted in and for itself; it announces Father the
beginning of mighty cosmic struggle that the forces of evil will launch against
the realization of God’s plan of salvation, which Jesus has come to proclaim
and to inaugurate. His experience in this seduction is unique, therefore, as is
the ministry or which he has been sent. The cosmic dimension of his
confrontation with the devil is further evident in that the scenes allude to
three events of the Exodus in which Israel of old was put to the test in the
desert. But where Israel of old ailed, there Jesus succeeds. The use of the
texts from Deuteronomy play upon that contrast and implicitly compare Jesus
with Israel of old. That Jesus displays his fidelity to his Father, and the
temptations portray him confronted by Evil personified and triumphing as heaven’s
emissary and God’s Son (3:22; 3:38).
The scenes have often
been said, further, to have a “messianic character.” By this is normally meant
that the scenes are not recorded in either Matthew or Luke for a horatory
purpose, i.e., to give Christians a model for withstanding diabolic temptation
in their moral conduct or lives. This observation has some truth to it, but the
character of these scenes should be more accurately expressed, since the title Christos or “Messiah” nowhere appears in
them, and it is far from evident that the title “Son of God” is meant only in a
messianic sense.
The distinctive
ending of the Lucan account, “So the devil, having exhausted every sort of temptation,
departed from him for a while” (4:13), gives the episode a forward-looking
orientation, but it also contains a key to the proper understanding of these
scenes. The prepositional phrase achri
kairou, whether understood simply as “for a while” (as in Acts 13:11), or
as some commentators would have it, “until an opportune (or critical) time,” is
almost universally understood as a reference to 22:3, where Satan is said to
enter Judas Iscariot at the beginning of the passion. But the Lucan ending also
contains the word peirasmos, which
has to be related to Jesus own peirasmoi,
“trials,” in 22:28. (Joseph A. Fitzmyer, Luke
the Theologian: Aspects of His Teaching [London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1989], 155-58,
emphasis in bold added)
For more, see:
Listing
of Articles on Christadelphian Issues
Thomas Farrar, The
Devil in the Wilderness
