The Temptation of Jesus

I’ve come across a couple of readings of the temptation of Jesus recently that have intrigued me. I thought I’d share them:

Unmasking the Powers by Walter Wink (I mistakenly called this Engaging the Powers last night. That would be the third part of the powers trilogy)

This book left my head spinning in a good way. It begins with Wink looking at how the understanding of Satan evolved through the history of Scripture and beyond. This being/idea began as part of the heavenly hosts and was a viewed as God’s sifter who presented tests to his humanity to separate the wheat and the chaff.

However, as the Jewish people began to rethink their understanding of God as behind all good and evil, Satan began to take on a more prominent role as adversary. However, it is most likely after the biblical account closes that Satan is finally seen as evil personified.

Wink says Satan, in the gospels, is adversary. Satan, through Jewish tradition, is offering Jesus a quick fix. He can turn stones into bread to feed the masses and start a movement. Satan then uses Scripture to tempt him again to prove he is the Son of God by casting himself off the temple, perhaps alluding to Malachi 3:1-4. Then, Satan tempts him with the leadership of a Jewish empire ruling over all nations having overthrown Rome.

Wink concludes of Satan:

“He is no archfiend seducing Jesus with offers of love, wealth and carnal pleasures. Satan’s task is much more subtle…Satan offers him, in short, not outright evils, but the highest goods known to Israel. That is when the satanic is most difficult to discern- when it offers the good instead of the best.

The question to us becomes, “What traditional ‘goods’ are keeping us from the post-resurrection ‘Best’?”

Then take John Howard Yoder’s Politics of Jesus.

Yoder begins with the announcement at the baptism that Jesus is the Son of God, which he says,” is not the definition or accreditation of a metaphysically defined status of sonship, it is a summons to a task.”

Thus, “The tempter’s hypothetical syllogism ‘If you are the Son of God, then…’ is reasoning not from a concept of metaphysical sonship but from kingship”

Yoder goes on to state the temptation in Luke begins with the economic option, not a concern of Jesus feeding himself. A miraculous banquet supplied by turning stones into bread would yield him great power.

The second temptation is to be an imperial ruler. Bowing the knee before Satan is embracing the “idolatrous character of political power hunger and nationalism.”

Yoder then states that the pinnacle of the temple is about much more than Jesus taking a leap of faith. Two possibilities of meaning exist within the history of Jewish thought in the image of the pinnacle of the temple. One is that being thrown from the tower in the temple into the Kidron valley outside the temple was the punishment for blasphemy. Jesus may have been tempted to seek miraculous deliverance from the penalty for his claims to divine authority and kingship.

The second is the descent of an apparition within the temple which Wink too directed us to in Malachi 3. Jesus may have considered stopping at being an unheralded religious reformer and heavenly messenger and taking the violent path of many a “messiah” before and after him. Even here, the ultimate expectation is that the victory would mean the messiah wouldn’t die for his claims but his enemies would.

The question for Yoder would be, “Would Jesus follow the way of the kings of the world through all history in their thirst for personal and nationalistic power or as king of the world be the “bearer of a new possibility of human, social, and therefore political relationships.”

So are we stuck living in the now or bearing the new possibility of humanity?

It’s a lot to work through, but give some thought and let me know what you think.