Monday, October 17, 2022

Notes on Jesus' "Perfection" and Temptation in the Wilderness from Terry J. Wright, Providence Made Flesh (2009)

 

[On the “Perfection” of Jesus in Heb 9:14]:

 

The claim that Jesus needs first to be made perfect (Heb 2:10; cf. 5:9) does not mean that he was once ‘imperfect’ – whatever that in itself might mean! In Hebrews, τελειοω and its cognates (2:10; 5:9; 7:19; 7:28; 9:9; 10:1, 14; 11:40; 12:23) should be understood primarily – though not exclusively – in terms of the cult. Perfection in ‘that state of purity which makes contact between God and the worshipper possible, together with the processes by which that is achieved’ (Isaacs, Sacred Space, 102); thus the τελειωσις of the high priest was his faithfulness to which was required of him. Through overcoming the temptation to disobey God, Jesus is made perfect, that is, achieves the necessary state of cultic purity that enables him rightly to be the high priest who enters the holy of holies by his own blood. His own perfection is the condition for the perfecting of those who approach God through him. (Terry J. Wright, Providence Made Flesh: Divine Presence as a Framework for a Theology of Providence [Paternoster Theological Monographs; Eugene, Oreg.: Wipf and Stock, 2009], 182 n. 71)

 

Indeed, Hebrews shows ‘that the Son through whom God made and upheld the world, offers triumphantly through testing and temptation and by the eternal Spirit, the sacrifice of praise and obedience that is the human calling’ (Gunton, ‘Martin Kähler Revisited’, 162) Jesus’s temptations in the wilderness (Mt 4:1-11; Mk 1:12-13; Lk 4:1-13) and Gethsemane (Mt 26:36-46; Mk 14:32-42; Lk 22:39-46; cf. Jn 12:27; Heb 5:7) are both key moments by which his appointment as God’s Son (Mt 3:13-17; Mk 1:9-11; Lk 3:21-22; cf. Jn 1:29-34; Heb 1:5) is tested, when his resolve to act faithfully is tested. Although these testings open Jesus to the various temptations put before him, they also open him to the possibility of drawing upon the Spirit’s power to resist them. Unlike any other person, then, Jesus offers himself in submission to God to forge a few way to him through his own flesh (10:20) - and did so ‘through the eternal Spirit’ (9:14). (Ibid., 188)

 

Importantly, Hebrews also states that Christ’s self-offering was ‘through the eternal spirit’ (δια πνευματος αιωνιου; Heb 9:14). The phrase is ambiguous, but we may understand it to mean, as we have suggested already, that Christ is strengthened by the Holy Spirit to remain obedient to the will of God and willingly to offer himself as the ultimate sacrifice for sins. Accordingly, the Spirit’s involvement in Christ’s life is not limited to any one episode, however crucial, but rather throughout his entire life, from conception to resurrection, so that the whole course of Christ’s obedience is established through dependence upon the Spirit. (Ibid., 194)

 

[On Matthew’s account of the temptation narrative]

 

For Matthew, then, Jesus must learn to be the Son of the Father through obedient suffering (cf. Isa 52:13-53:12; Heb 5:8): this is the vocation prepared for him, a vocation inaugurated by his anointing with the Spirit at his baptism.

 

The anointed Jesus is ‘led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil’ (Mt 4:1). Again, Matthew portrays Jesus as the obedient Son of God by contrasting him with the Israelites, who were led around the wilderness for forty years so that God could test their hearts and know ‘whether or not [they] would keep his commandments’ (Deut 8:2). Crucially, Matthew emphasises that the Spirit himself leads Jesus into the wilderness; that Jesus follows is a further demonstration, therefore, of his willing obedience to his calling. He is responsive to the Spirit’s direction in and sovereignty over his life. Furthermore, ti is by the power of the Spirit that Jesus resits the three temptations dangled by the devil before him (Mt 4:3, 6, 9); Gerald Hawthorne argues that Matthew juxtaposes the two phrases ‘by the Spirit’ and ‘by the devil’ to imply that ‘the Saviour’s victory over the tempter was due in large part to his being filled with the Spirit.’ Indeed, Hawthorne continues,  the Spirit ‘enabled Jesus to see the subtle dangers that underlay the seemingly innocent appeals of Satan to exercise his messianic powers on his own authority’ (The Presence and the Power, 140). Succumbing to the temptations would have deviated Jesus from faithfulness to his Father; but Jesus emerged victorious from the temptations, not 'simply because of his own inner strength or because of the set determination of his ’ill', but because he was ‘fortified in his determination to obey the Father by the strengthening force of the Spirit within him’ (The Presence and the Power, 139). Though not explicit throughout the account of Jesus’s temptations in the wilderness, the Spirit’s leading of Jesus to that place (4:1), coupled with Matthew’s ongoing comparison between Jesus’s testing with that of Israel, suggests that he understands the Spirit to be guiding Jesus ceaselessly, just as he also guided Israel (Neh 9:20; cf. Isa 63:7-10). If Jesus was tested to see how he would respond to the responsibility entailed by is status as God’s son, Matthew’s conclusion, then, is that he resisted the temptation to abuse that position by the power of the Spirit of God. (Ibid., 212-13)

 

What, though, does it mean to say that the Spirit enabled Jesus to obey his Father? We must distinguish carefully between two senses of the verb ‘to enable’ that can be applied to the Spirit’s role in the life of Jesus. To say that the Spirit enables Jesus to obey could mean either that he empowers Jesus to do so or, more forcefully, that he ensures Jesus’ s obedience. This latter sense is problematic: it invites a dangerous suggestion that Jesus’s faithfulness could not have been otherwise, that is, although it was always possible for Jesus to disobey his Father, somehow the Spirit ensured that this would never happen. There is an echo here of Calvin’s contention that Adam could have remained free from sin were it not God’s design for him to fall: the integrity of Adam’s ability to sin or not to sin is overruled by the divine will. Similarly, to say that the Spirit enables Jesus not to sin could imply that the Spirit prevents Jesus from sinning; but if this is so, then it is legitimate to question the degree to which Jesus truly is obedient to God’s will. Does Christ actually learn obedience, as Hebrews 5:8 contends, if the Spirit removes the need for him to struggle with temptation? Furthermore, we should not see the Spirit’s enabling as somehow preserving Jesus from the effects of living in a fallen world, for that offers the latter a form of protection that other humans are not privileged to have; the implication would be that Jesus remains faithful to God because the temptations he faced would not have been real temptations at all.

 

Against both of these, it is preferable to see Jesus obeying his Father in the power and strength of the Spirit: the Spirit enables Jesus’s obedience by prompting him to accept his vocation and then, by that same Spirit, consolidates that act of faithfulness by empowering his resolve to continue through to his crucifixion (This does not mean that the Spirit leads Jesus to a point of decision only to abandon him for its duration. Jesus’s acceptance of his vocation is a faithful response not only conditioned by the Spirit but also made in the Spirit’s power. There is no time when Jesus must rely on his own strength, even if the decision to remain faithful is his own; and all that he does in faithfulness to his Father is because he offers himself continuously through the Spirit). When the Son was tempted to turn away from the Father’s will, ‘the Spirit was present with him to enlighten his mind, to clarify the issues, to urge him toward the right choice, but not to make that choice for him’ (The Presence and Power, 230). It is this conception of the Spirit’s relation to Jesus that Matthew appears to endorse, and perhaps the absence of an explicit mention of the Spirit in his account of Gethsemane emphasises that ultimately it is Jesus who renders the obedience necessary, though not apart from the Spirit, to secure God’s new beginning for creation by his death. ‘The righteousness of the cross . . . sprang from the human will of Jesus, fraught like ours with temptation yet counselled and empowered by the Holy Spirit” (Weinandy, In the Likeness of Sinful Flesh, 108). By the Spirit’s power, Jesus remains faithful to God’s will for him and in turn ensures that God’s will for all things is done as his death renews the life of creation, the actuality of which is demonstrated supremely by his own resurrection (Mt 28:1-10). (Ibid., 214-15)