I’ve been in the desert with Him these days of Lent, at the suggestion of a priest. In the way that immigrants have pined for their homeland of Ireland, or Italy; or pilgrims can keep in their hearts those special days in Rome or Jerusalem: Can we, for this season, live not so much among the distractions of the world, but rather be recollected, with Him, in a desert place? This same priest said that we should also look for the Devil there, who most assuredly will assail us.
The Gospel account of the temptations astounds me. Surely, we are dealing here with a mystery. The account itself is a marvel, since it had to have come from Jesus. There were no witnesses. It’s the Lord’s telling of his temptations, in the way that He wanted the Church to remember them. The three demands of the Devil and the quotations from Scripture – the chosen narrative of the Lord, terse but baffling and complex.
Luke’s ordering of the temptations differs from Matthew’s. Did one of the evangelists get it wrong, or was he trying to make a point “as an editor”? And yet indifference of order can be conveyed by a teacher also. Suppose that after dictating the narrative the Lord asked His apostles to repeat it back: one does so in a different order; the others point out the apparent mistake; but the Lord says, “It does not matter; the order is not important.” Then indifference of order in the matter has entered into Sacred Tradition. Apostolic authority extends to judgments of indifference.
Why were there three temptations? I cannot believe that the number is a meaningless “accident,” or that the number was controlled by the arbitrary choice of the Devil. Also, what was the Devil trying to accomplish – discover whether Jesus was God? Derail the mission of salvation before it started? Provoke a second Fall of human nature?
I myself find a clue to answering these questions in the way that (in the Lord’s own narrative) the Devil begins two of his temptations: “If you are the Son of God.” This phrase, “Son of God,” it seems to me, contains implicitly three distinct ideas, about anyone to whom it is applied: God, Son, human.
First, anyone who is “the Son of God” is God. The definite article is important, since it conveys that we are not dealing with an analogy or resemblance. The Pharisees understood this. (John 5:18) “The Son” must be the same in nature as His Father, homoousios. That is why, I take it, the first temptation is a challenge to create bread – as only a being who is God can create.
But nothing coming from the Devil is ever straight; he is always perverse, contemptuous, and mocking. He does not say, “create bread.” He says, “command the stones to become bread.”
Now, when God creates, He creates ex nihilo. Or if He wanted to teach us something about cooperation, He would create baskets of bread from a few small loaves that we contribute. But the Devil wants to see creative power bounded by the shape of a stone. He seems incapable of distinguishing a miracle from magic: “command the stones” is like sorcery.
He wants a parody of transubstantiation, that stone become bread. And if Jesus had gone along with the obscene demand (per impossible), the Devil would have shown Him merciless contempt and mocked Him.
Second, anyone who is “son of” is therefore a person, inherently related to a person, the father, “of whom” he is son. Which is to say, the second idea that this appellation contains is that “the Son of God” precisely as the Son, is related to the Father. Thus, the second temptation, “If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down from this tower,” can be taken as directed at Our Lord’s sonship.
The Devil, who has no familiarity with sonship, is apparently thinking that a son depends and relies upon his father. He knows “at arm’s length” that a son expects his father to uphold him. If a son falls, his father lifts him up, “on eagle’s wings,” as it were.
In his perverted, materialistic mind, the devil is presuming that to the downward force of gravity, a father would inevitably contrapose an upward force, drawing the son upwards to him. It could not but happen. As if the love within the Trinity could be modelled by a conflict of necessary forces!
Third, any evident man, to whom the phrase “the Son of God” is applied, is also man, with human nature, such that His divinity is somehow hidden. Thus, this third temptation must keep divinity and sonship out of sight. It must begin right away, as it does, with the merely human, with a display of the splendor of the kingdoms of the world.
With divinity now supposedly out of sight, the Devil can suggest, in effect – if your goal is that the nations be your heritage, and the ends of the earth your possession (Psalms 2:8), then, since I have the power, beg these of me.
As I understand it, in recounting the temptations with emphasis on the phrase, “the Son of God,” Jesus has made use of the Devil, to teach the apostles about Himself. It is as if the Nicene Creed was already set down at the beginning of His ministry.
The Fathers say that the Devil never did discover from the exchanges whether Jesus was God. But if he were the obedient sort, prepared to say serviam, he might have seen the answer in how Jesus replies to him, because in each reply Jesus presumes that He Himself is God.
Man lives “by every word which comes from the mouth of God” – including this word that you are hearing now. “Do not put God” – that is, me – “to the test.” “God only should you serve.” And yet you won’t, and therefore “Begone, Satan!” And the three temptations come to an end.
