Monday, July 20, 2020

Joseph Fitzmyer on Luke 4:1-13 and the Temptation of Jesus in the Wilderness

 

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