SECTION VII

the spiritual rest and spiritual labour of Christ in the wilderness-the temptation

(Matt. 4; Mark 1; Luke 4)

The words of the Evangelist (Mat 4:1), ‘Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness, to be tempted of the devil,’ have been looked upon by modern criticism as a dark hieroglyphic. But they are explained by the simple law, that every ethical nature, according to the measure of its power and the destiny operating in this power, must maintain on earth the conflict with the powers of darkness, in order to gain influence for humanity, and to become a decided reality. The facts of experience correspond to this law, that to every first inspiration of such a power the tempter unawares stands opposite, as if one power had called forth the other from the darkness of the world to the battle-field. In this manner the divine government of the world fulfils its work. By the uncovering of evil in the course of events, over against the manifestations of good, judgment is executed on the absolute nothingness and baseness of evil. Thus there was a world-historical, and indeed a divine reason, why Christ should be led by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil. His spiritual rest was exchanged for a great and severe spiritual task in the wilderness: it had for its sequel a temptation which was consummated in a mysterious historical act. But after the victory over the temptation, the spiritual festivity reappeared with fresh and steady splendour.

In the Jordan the bright side of sinful humanity had blessed the Lord; in the wilderness He was obliged to endure the action of its dark side,—the tempting operation of its curse.

If we are informed that the Spirit led the Lord into the wilderness after His God-man consciousness had been festively filled with that divine joy of His inner life, yet we at the same time receive the intimation that the Lord could not immediately enter with these riches of His heart into the congregation of His people, who formed the contrast to the wilderness.

We might indeed look on the forty days which Jesus spent in the wilderness, first of all, as the celebration of the disclosed fulness of His inner glory. He needed to be a long time alone with God, in order to spread before Him the great revelation which had now been completed, to meditate upon it with Him, and to seal it in the quiet consecration of His life.

This celebration was at all events the beginning, the key-note, and aim of His sojourn in solitude. It was the holy mysterious poetry of the completed unfolding of all Heaven’s fulness in the heart of humanity, the beautiful blooming time of roses in the soul of the God-man, the still hour of the holy spring night of the New Covenant on which the nightingale of the world sang its first song to its God. But why call this glorious celebration in solitude, so significantly, the temptation in the wilderness?

Christ, in the celebration of his Spirit-life, could not turn away from humanity. He could not retain this fulness of life as booty for Himself. It belonged to the nature of this inner glory that He regarded it as God’s mission to the world—as Heaven’s great benediction—as the salvation of the world. The infinite divine joy with which His heart now throbbed, was at the same time unbounded love of man; and thus it became an indescribably strong impulse to communicate Himself to the world, and especially to the people of Israel. The impulse of His life was to enter without delay into the midst of the congregation of Israel. And the people called Him. They called Him by all the yearnings of their expectations, by all the thoughts and images of their ideal of the Messiah. The world with all its ideals called Him. But the ideals that called Him were poisoned by the revelry and intoxication of humanity. The Messianic image of a sinful world—a clever, but in all points distorted caricature—as the confused, dim, mocking image of a chaotically agitated and serpent-like wily prince of this world—contradicted the pure image of God in the Messianic consciousness of Christ. Therefore, no sooner had He after His baptism turned Himself in Spirit to the world, with the greeting of His love, than He received a counter-greeting in a loud siren-song of all the distorted intoxicated world-ideals. He could not advance a step among His people without meeting the caricatured image of the chief of men; without coming upon false assumptions, false words, interpretations and fictions of a false chiliasm perverting the history of the world in a thousand forms, and of a fanatical and carnal idealistic world-vertigo.

The contrariety of Christ’s Messianic kingdom to the Messianic ideal of the Jews has often been so explained as if Christ wished to establish a merely spiritual kingdom of heaven—as if He had not inserted in His work the tendency to plant the ideal life, and to advance it to its completion in the actual appearance, and by His redemption really to transform the world. But this ‘anti-judaical’ spiritualism falls itself into the most palpable error, even while intending to correct the error of the Jews. It contradicts the Messianic image of the prophets, who, agreeably to the nature of the case, combine in one view the inner and outer kingdom of heaven; it equally contradicts the Christian doctrine of that transformation of the world which is to be completed at the resurrection; and lastly, it contradicts the most explicit declarations and promises of Christ Himself, who points to His second advent as the transformation of the world. This view also contradicts every well-grounded theory of the world. It belongs to the dualism which splits the world into two halves—so that ideas must form spectres without corporeity, and matters of fact mere animal phenomena without spiritual life. In truth, this spiritualism generally falls back into that chiliasm which it professes to shun. For it must always grant or desire some kind of transformation of the world, and for that purpose it requires both principles and organs. But as it has rejected that transformation by the Spirit and life of Christ, it forms for itself other principles unchristian and antichristian, which are to make up for or to supplement Christian ones, and must seek in false messiahs for the organs of the world’s transformation. But for this dualism Christ has given no warrant whatever by His declaration, ‘My kingdom is not of this world.’ These words rather express the fact, that with the appearance of His kingdom, this world vanishes, and the future becomes manifest. The very fact that He speaks of His kingdom shows that He has founded not merely a school, or a congregation, or a church, but a morally organized community, completing itself in ideal universality. The kingdom is His kingdom. But He will surrender it into the hands of the Father; therefore Christ has never given up the expectation that His Messianic kingdom will be a kingdom of outward visibility. As the festival of Easter arises out of Good Friday, so His new world arises from the depths of world-renunciation—His kingdom of glory from His kingdom of the cross. But the expectation that it must begin as an outward kingdom, and therefore outward in its constitution, without being founded in God and in the life of the Spirit,—as a secular kingdom brought into existence by means of craft and force, and so an anticipatory counterfeit of the true kingdom, in which every appearance must proceed from the fulness of the Spirit,—this expectation Christ could never have cherished; for it was the very temptation He combated in the wilderness, and truly a temptation of Satan.

The kingdom of darkness can never realize on earth its chaotic tendencies in their naked, wild form. The destruction of human life, to a large world-historical extent, can be effected only when the spirit of the ethical chaos succeeds in wearing the mask of a transformed cosmos. Only in delusive social forms, political and hierarchical, but especially Messianic and chiliastic, can the ‘nameless beast’ win for itself, and maintain for a while, a great appearance. The history of evil on the earth proves this. It often appears in chiliastic, often in hierarchical forms; but in the one case the chiliasm is headed by a hierarchical power, in the other case the hierarchy is animated by the intoxication of chiliasm. The hierarchy that crucified Christ was in reality Jewish chiliasm throughout. In His time it was concentrated in the falsified ideal of the Messiah. Its special sympathetic power was its connection with all carnal, extravagant idealizing (Idealisterei)—with all the fantastic, wild fanaticisms in the world. But its deepest principle was the chief of the demoniacal chaos, who readily disguised himself as an angel of light. When the spirit of a people is hostilely excited in an antichristian tendency against the spirit of Christ and the spirit of the true transformation of the world, in this excitement it necessarily forms a sympathetic union with the spirit of the world in its ungodly tendency. In this sympathy its own tendency coincides with all the tendencies of satanic power; and as this is the mightiest power of the whole community, so it becomes its animating principle. In truth, demoniacal evil can realize its ideal only in forms of light which allow the inward mockery to be seen through them;—only in forms of the Holy through which may be seen the sneer of the internal contradiction;—only in a false scenery of the transformed world, through which the lightnings of the ancient chaos flash in all directions. The Jewish expectation of the Messiah had its ideal realized in the horrible scenes of the Jewish war.

This expectation met the Lord in His way, as soon as he wished to turn to the people. It was the assumption that He must found His kingdom on an ungodly carnal mind, on unspirituality and internal corruption, on craft and force, which always accompany fanatical idealism among mankind. In His pure sympathy for humanity, He felt the drawing of this intense perverted longing in the world. But no sooner did He feel this influence than it excited a powerful repulsion in the Holy Spirit with which He was filled. This repulsion drove Him into the wilderness. That sympathetic influence opposed Him like a wall. The spirit of temptation encountered Him all the way between Jordan and Jerusalem. Christ, with His Messianic consciousness, sought a sure entrance among His people, and seemed to find none. How could He escape being grievously misunderstood by the world, when He appeared in it as the Messiah, the Son of God? The more He was impelled by the love of mankind to hold intercourse with His people, so much the more a holy shyness towards men drove Him into the wilderness. He could not directly manifest to men the Sun of God’s fulness which glowed in His heart, without dazzling their weak eyes. An immediate animated disclosure of His inmost soul would have been for them the final judgment. And how could He expose the glorious mystery of His soul to the unutterable profanation which must ensue, if He was willing to disclose His consciousness directly to the people and trust Himself to the world? It was the curse of the world, that the splendour of His inmost soul, unless it were veiled, must destroy the world. He was obliged to secure His sanctuary in the wilderness from the profanation of the temple-goers, His kingly dignity from the insults of the rulers, His Messiahship from the prevalent Messianic delusions, and His love of men from men. Amidst these embarrassments, He concealed Himself in the depths of the desert. He lived among the wild beasts. They alarmed not the Prince of men, and were less dangerous to Him than men. He wandered about, and could not leave the wilderness, because the Spirit always drove Him back into solitude as often as His heart turned towards men; and then temptation again assailed Him with the alluring sympathy of the world. Thus He was withdrawn from the world for forty days. He had taken refuge in concealment, as if in death, from the siren’s song of the world’s ideal. He tasted no food during this period of intense mental conflict. His sojourn in the wilderness forms an appalling spectacle,—the spectacle of a man prostrated in the deepest sorrow, and harassed with the severest conflict.

And yet, as we have already intimated, it was not exclusively this mental conflict, involving the interests of humanity, which detained Him in the wilderness. Strongly as the love of man, on the one hand, attracted Him, not less strongly, on the other hand, was He attracted by the love of God. The attraction of the one prepared for Him unspeakable sorrow, that of the latter inexpressible joy. There is a blessedness which is plunged in sadness—a delicate, trembling joy, a solemn festival of the soul in which all the joys of heaven meet and salute all the sufferings of humanity. In this state of feeling we find our Lord. He turned Himself to the Father. In the Father’s bosom He concealed His kingly sense of God—His holy horror at the drunken idealizing of the world. If His sorrow caused Him to fast, still more was this effect produced by the peace of this super-mundane retirement, in which He could spend forty days as one holy festival in the presence of His Father. This preponderance of the rest of God over human labour in His spirit—this glorification of His sorrow in His blessedness, of His love of men in His love of God, was just the preponderance of His freedom over the sympathies of His life, which resulted in His victory. This peculiar state of mind serves to explain the long fasting of Christ.

Even in the first days of His fasting, criticism begins to be voracious while it accompanies Him with its meagre reflections. Its doubts cannot disturb us. Christ’s fasting was not legal, nor a result of enactment. He might have lived, like John, on locusts and wild honey without essentially breaking His fast.¹ But we can find no difficulty if we take the fasting of Christ in the strictest sense. Often deep thinkers,² contemplative devotees,³ sorrowing penitents,⁴ ecstatic enthusiasts, or persons under morbid excitement,⁵ nave fasted for an extraordinary length of time. But Christ is also in this respect the Prince of men, who in the highest heroic measure comprehends the particular possibilities of this class. In Him the power of the deepest contemplation co-operated with the power of the deepest sorrow, and these with the highest inspiration, in order to sustain a disposition so free from wants and so super-mundane, and which was perfected by means of the highest sympathy which His soul now felt for the entire morbid state of His generation. In truth, His fasting, according to its deepest significance, was the specific, redeeming counteraction against the malady of the world, as far as it consisted in a mad, false idealizing. To that insane chiliastic idolizing of the world which would fain have deluded and fettered Him, He opposed the counterpoise of His perfected sober-mindedness, of which the outward form appeared in His fasting. It should never be forgotten that Christianity was born into the world with a plenitude of the Spirit, which showed the freest exaltation above nature in the fasting of Christ. And this characteristic it retains through all time. In this heroic sobriety of soul it overcame and rescued the Roman-Grecian world in that wild debauchery which would have been its ruin. And thus, hereafter, the Church by the power of a spirit-like sobriety will overcome the jovial banqueting of those who will be eating, and drinking, and amusing themselves at the end of the world (Mat 24:38-39). But what specially supported our Lord during those days in the energy of His life, was the creative vital power which gave Him copious supplies of nourishment and vigour, and refreshed His inmost soul. He lived by depending on the mouth of God, while He retired with ecstasy into His innermost principle of life.⁶

In the great movements of His exalted consciousness, the forty days might pass away as a single day, or an hour. It has been observed,⁷ that in the lives of Moses⁸ and Elijah,⁹ periods of forty days occur as fast-times in critical junctures; and the narrative of the sojourn of Jesus in the wilderness has brought to mind the forty years’ wandering of Israel in the wilderness. Some have made this remark in order to find out traces of fiction in the history; others, in order to comfort themselves with the thought that the number of forty days is not to be taken too rigidly.¹⁰ But this rhythmical recurrence of forty days in similar junctures of the Theocracy rather points to a more general mysterious law of life. The forty days’ fasting of Moses also forms a contrast to the preceding rebellion of the people, who ‘ate, and drank, and rose up to play,’ and showed their preference for a false religion. Elijah in like manner presented a spiritual antagonism to the hankering of his people after the fantastic pleasure of the worship of Baal. The common labour of man is comprised in the cycle of a week, and his spiritual labour in the cycle of a week multiplied into itself, in a period of about seven weeks of labour. The spiritual labour by which Israel, as a people, were obliged to purify themselves for the temperate enjoyment of the glories of Canaan, required forty years. But why should not the theocratic history, the innermost essence of which is poetry, be carried on, like poetry, in rhythmical relations? In Christ’s life also, this law of life must be fulfilled, according to which the psychical relations stand in living affinity to the earthly relations of time.

But when the forty days were fulfilled, then he hungered. He became vividly conscious of His destitution. He hungered not only after bread, but also after man, and after living intercourse with the world. This was the moment in which all the tempting He had withstood was concentrated, and at the same time unfolded, in most distinct single temptations; the moment in which the tempter, whose spiritual influence He had up to that time experienced, came before Him in a more defined form. We are able to distinguish exactly these two stadia of the temptation: the secret whispers of the tempting spirit during the forty days, and its final concentration in the three assaults at the close. Matthew has condensed the whole temptation of Christ into those final assaults. Mark has simply noticed the temptation in its duration of forty days. Luke has specified the two constituent parts of the temptation. As soon as we have ascertained the significance of the whole transaction, no real contradictions can be imagined. But we must now endeavour to set in a clear light the distinction between the two forms of the temptation.

During the forty days Christ was tempted in this way, that He was met by the Messianic ideal of Israel in its corrupted chiliastic form, sustained by all the morbid fanatical excitement then existing in the world, and by the powers of darkness. But this temptation was probably not an internal process, as it is often represented in order to explain the history of the temptation.¹¹ Christ could not in an idle manner brood over the possibilities of sin, or imagine them in darkness by spreading out the allurements of the false ideal of the world before His own spirit. On this supposition, one part of His consciousness would have been the tempter, and the other the conqueror.¹² Such a self-tempting of the consciousness can hardly be imagined without involving sin.¹³ The totality of the soul’s life will not allow us to separate the voluntary imagination of the tempting evil from an accompanying movement of evil desire. And apart from this psychological law, another law of life forbids our regarding the temptation of Christ as a fact of His consciousness isolated from His people’s life. It belongs to the order and soundness of the inner life to indulge in no idle brooding anticipations of the future. The soul can and should anticipate the outward experience, but only in proportion as it comes in contact with the spiritual prognostics of the experience, as the collision with experience begins to fall upon its ear; as therefore it is congruous with a human life which must be always prepared and led through the inward to the outward, and with its essential superiority to time. But if beyond this necessity it indulges in arbitrary anticipations, it gets out of its historical rhythm. This arbitrary exercise of the imagination would be in itself sinful, even should there be nothing sinful in the nature of its imaginings. But Christ could not disturb the order of His life in a morbid manner. His battle with the evil one was, therefore, not the result of a fiction. It was a genuine historical collision with him, though a spiritual one. The whole soul of Christ stood firm in the absolute rejection of the temptation, which was not in the least degree the offspring of His own fancy. But not the less was His soul moved and agitated by temptation, in consequence of the sympathy which bound Him closely to His own people and to mankind. In the element of this sympathy He beheld all the images of temptation standing clearly before Him-He heard all the tones of its allurements. Christ’s living impulse to manifest Himself to His people placed Him incessantly opposite to temptation, which was continually meeting Him in new forms. The repulsion with which He continually put it away from Him was His victory.

In consequence of this repulsion, Christ must always have remained in the wilderness, unless in some particular moments of His conflict the possibility had not been developed and displayed to Him of entering among the people, and thus fulfilling the mission of His life. The struggle of Christ with temptation was at the same time to secure and determine the complete carrying out of His calling in all its distinguishing traits. And since, on the one hand, in the life of His free love the necessity of manifesting Himself to the people moved Him, and, on the other hand, He felt the necessity of concealing and withdrawing Himself from the people, the plan of His Messianic ministry required to be clearly and distinctly unfolded under the painful reciprocal action of this apparent contradiction. At the end of His conflict He had a fully developed solution of the difficult problem, how He could surrender Himself as the true Messiah to the people, who were carried away by a false Messianic image. The completion of this determination of His calling coincided with the completion of His victory over temptation, and therefore with the completion of the festal repose of His Spirit.

But it would be contrary to all general and individual experience if we were disposed to admit that the temptation of Christ was ended and completed in a merely spiritual and ideal form. Actual fact shows us that the moral conflicts of man cannot possibly remain spiritualist combats. The tempting opportunity always meets the susceptible disposition, and converts the ideal conflict into a historical one.¹⁴ The solemnity of the divine superintendence demands it, and the thoughtfulness of life and the truth of victory. How many a flaming inspiration of idealist valour has become to ‘rude reality a prey!’ The victory of Christ over the tempter would not have been perfectly certain if the latter had not appeared to Him in historic reality.

But how did he appear to Christ?¹⁵ We need not explain at length that Satan could not become a man, and assume flesh and blood, like the Son of God. Such a supposition would expose any one to the charge of Manicheism; it would be condemned for its dualism. But if it were imagined that Satan showed himself to the Lord in a spectral appearance, it can hardly be granted that Christ would let Himself be disposed of by such a spectre of hell on the soil of this earth’s reality, and be led through the world in all directions.¹⁶ Nothing is gained, if it is attempted to render the supposition easier, by supposing that Satan transformed himself into an angel of light; for never could he appear more detestable and repulsive in Christ’s eyes than under this mask. It is perfectly unchristological to regard these temptations as a series of juggling tricks by the arch-sorcerer, since it supposes that he transported the Lord from one scene of temptation to another.¹⁷ Even the pious popular feeling in the legends, which represent the tricks of jugglers as failing in the eyes of innocent children and virtuous maidens, goes beyond this mode of viewing things, which makes the eye of Christ dependent on the illusions of the Prince of Lies. Indeed, if we wished to deal seriously with this supposed illusion, it might be difficult to distinguish it from the beginning of an internal infatuation.

The tempter did not approach the Lord with juggling tricks, but in the dangerous power of historical circumstances. The kingdom of Satan was represented by the false tendency of the kingdom of this world, and this lastly by the perverted tendency of the Jewish hierarchy. But that the Jewish hierarchy about this time were in quest of a Messiah according to their ideal, may easily be proved.

That deputation which the hierarchy sent from Jerusalem to Jordan, for the purpose of obtaining from the Baptist an explanation respecting his own character, must have returned to Jerusalem, according to the dates furnished by the Evangelists, about the time when Christ’s forty days’ sojourn had really expired. From the account of the Evangelist John (1:28, 29), it is quite evident that Jesus came back from the solitude of the wilderness just one day after the return of this deputation from Jordan. Now, the Baptist had declared to them in the most explicit terms that he himself was not the Messiah, but at the same time most distinctly announced that the Messiah was come among them without their knowing Him. From a sense of his theocratic duty, he could not content himself on such a subject with simple intimations. If he pointed out the Messiah to his disciples, much more would he mark Him out to the rulers of His people, whatever might be the consequences. If, then, the deputation came to him precisely at the time in which he had recognized the person of the Messiah, he would regard it as an intimation from the Lord to direct the attention of the deputation away from himself to the acknowledged Messiah. If he could not direct them to His place of sojourn in the desert, yet he could so exactly describe His personal appearance, that it would be easy for the deputation to find Him on their way home. But, at all events, it would be a very false conception of this politically excited hierarchy, to suppose that they would take home so quietly the announcement from the lips of the Baptist, that the Messiah was in their midst, without making any further inquiries on the matter of fact. The Jewish hierarchy, filled with deep rancour against the Romans, longed for a political Messiah. As to the existence of this longing, we must not be misled by the hypocrisy with which they delivered up the true Messiah to the Romans, professing the highest devotedness to the Emperor; it is sufficiently confirmed by the later Jewish history. These men therefore left the Baptist under the excitement of this longing, and pursued the traces of the Messiah; and all the more readily they would pass near His retreat on their way home, if, according to traditional accounts, He was sojourning in the wilderness near Jericho. It might not be difficult for them to find out the Man they were so anxious to see, since His inner conflicts were now ended, and His course of life or entrance into the world was now clearly marked out; He was therefore on the point of leaving the wilderness on His return to the Baptist. But if they found Him, they would accost Him with all the parade and impatience of their Messianic expectations. They would present Him with a Messianic programme diametrically opposite in all essential points to that which had been formed in His own mind.¹⁸

The same pure divine Prince of spirits who treated Peter as a Satan when he wanted to dissuade from the path that led to the cross, as ordained by His Father—who regarded the ripened thoughts of treachery in Judas as an inspiration of Satan (Joh 14:30)—and, lastly, who beheld in His own death on the cross a judgment on the prince of this world-must have regarded this historical temptation on the part of the Sanhedrim as the culmination and historic completion of that sympathetic temptation of Satan with which He had wrestled in the wilderness.

The hierarchs, accustomed to a life of luxury, must have been astonished beyond measure, when they discovered the supposed instrument of their designs, the great Prince of the world, in the form of a fasting, hungry hermit. The oriental pomp, we might say, the poetry of courtiers, may be detected in the words, ‘If Thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread.’ As little as John the Baptist could have thought of a literal transformation of stones when he said, ‘God is able of these stones to raise up children to Abraham,’ so little could the voice of temptation have required here, in a literal sense, that the Lord should change stones into bread. Such a requirement could have been no temptation for Him. In the soul of Christ least of all could the thought arise, of using His miraculous power in so fantastic a manner. Indeed we can hardly impute such an expectation even to the Jewish hierarchs. It is true, they expected a Messiah whose rule should quickly change the desert into a blooming champaign;¹⁹ but in what manner, was a matter of indifference to them. If He had exhibited Himself decidedly in their sense as the Son of God, the wilderness would very soon, by His magical power over spirits, have become an Israelitish camp—scene, in which would have flowed a superabundance of all earthly enjoyments. But still more directly must He have been able, in their opinion, to change the wilderness into a region of delight by the magic art of a world-transforming culture. This, indeed, was the chief element of the temptation, that He should at once begin the desired transformation of the world for appeasing His own hunger, and for the celebration of the commencing worldly pleasure with the transformation of the wilderness in which they and He were then standing.²⁰ But this proposal was a real temptation for Him, since the actual transformation of the world lay within the scope of His ministry, and since the infinite patience of His spirit was required to wait for that manifestation of the glorious fulness of life which always floated before Him as the slow, late bloom and fruit of all the activity of His spirit. Thousands suffer themselves to be misled by this first speech of the tempter to a deceptive false glorification of the world, colouring and covering the curse of the wilderness. Thus ofttimes, by popular delusion, by robbery, by the subversion of social order, by enormous loans and deceptions of all kinds, the deserts are made glad, and the stones are turned into bread. We detect traces of this sorcery in the chiliastic Zion of the Munster Anabaptists, in Wallenstein’s camp, as well as in many other historical caricatures of the world’s transformation. Still the tempter sings this old song,²¹ and his magic tones are just now sounding again through the world with a marvellous power of delusion. Christ, therefore, in virtue of that great sympathy with which He, as Prince of men, felt the pulse of humanity, heard in the address of the tempter the call of all carnal idealizing of hunger, want, and destitution in the world, the lamentation of all false mendicity, the fawning petitions of all chiliast worldlings, the extravagant requirements of all hypocritical and superficial philanthropists: ‘O command that these stones be made bread!’ The sympathetic rush of all morbid human longings after the enchanted land of an unjust and measureless abundance, and a glory of the flesh overpowering the spirit, broke out in this temptation against His heart, and made Him shudder, since he felt most deeply all the misery of the world—all the glow of its hope, and all the glory of its prospects. Thus He was tempted to create an abundance with the powers of His divine-human life, in contravention of the divine order, and in a self-willed magical manner. But before this delirious excitement He veiled His unique divine-human consciousness. He answered it with a divine word, which had formerly supported the confidence of pious human hearts during their sufferings in the wilderness: ‘Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God.’²² In the name of humanity itself, of necessitous man, He rejected the assumption that man cannot realize the ideal of his spirit unless he is living in the splendour of outward abundance. He asserted to the tempter, the dignity of the personality by which man is elevated above the requirement of mere animal existence. Man lives not by bread alone; but the breath of life from the mouth of God gives him his life in the most special sense.

By His victory over the first temptation Christ laid the foundation for the genuine transformation of the world, and for the establishment of a real abundance upon earth in the blessing of His Spirit. The two miraculous feedings of the people in the wilderness, which He performed at a later period, would represent, as by a wonderful prelude, this transformation of the earth into the superabundance of heaven.

Now began the second temptation. Satan led the Lord to Jerusalem, placed Him on a pinnacle, and said to Him, ‘If Thou be the Son of God, cast Thyself down; for it is written, He shall give His angels charge concerning thee, and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone.’²³ If Christ had really in an outward sense stood on a pinnacle of the temple,²⁴ Satan would hardly have made the proposal to throw Himself down literally. At least this suggestion would not have been to Him a temptation—a psychical shock. But the actual temptation must have really agitated Him. Probably He was transported in a figurative sense to the summit of the temple-pinnacle by the ostentatious offers of the deputies of the Sanhedrim. No doubt the most flattering prospects awaited His recognition by the Sanhedrim. The most solemn assurances were given. As the prophetic and priestly King, He saw Himself already placed on the summit of the temple. Thence He was to make His entry into Jerusalem with the recognition of the priests. But this mode of manifestation to Israel appeared to Him as a fatal death-leap. It is true the plea was urged, that, according to the word of God, there could be no danger for the Lord’s Anointed; He would be borne by angels, and glide over all obstructions. But Christ foiled the tempter with the words, ‘Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God.’²⁵ Thus He opposed a definite word of Scripture, in its true scope, to the false exposition of an indefinite and obscure one. Thou shalt not attempt to draw God into the way of thy self-will, thy pride, or thy enthusiasm. He will not allow Himself to be drawn by thee into a sinful interest; much rather would He let thee fall and drop. If thou wilt tempt Him, the attempt will become a dangerous temptation for thyself. This is the meaning of the command which the Lord held as a shield before His breast, in order to intercept the second dart of the tempter. He rendered the Old Testament precept more pointed, without altering the meaning, by substituting the singular thou for the plural ye. He thus at the same time brought it home to the tempter, that he tempted God when he tempted Christ. It appeared, therefore, to the Lord a monstrous, fatal venture to trust Himself to the deputies of the Sanhedrim, and to give Himself up to the priesthood of His people. Had this been possible, only the corpse of the true Messiah would have fallen from the pinnacle of the temple among the people; the hierarchy would have made of Him a different character altogether from what He was. Let us imagine ourselves present at the moment when Christ saw the inclination of the fathers of His nation to receive Him according to their notions of the Messiah, with all the allurements of the historical and Israelitish good-will which such an offer must contain,—let us recollect that all the sympathies which tradition, patriotism, and piety form in the world’s history must be involved in His temptation to surrender the sanctuary of His inner life to an infatuated foreign power,—and we shall perceive that His heart must have been agitated to its inmost depths when the storm of such influences broke upon Him. How many noble spirits inflamed by patriotic or religious enthusiasm have fallen before the tempter, because they and their vocation have been held in thraldom by criminal, false, historical tendencies, traditions, and authorities! Jesus withstood the temptation in the power of His sober-mindedness, and of that pure fidelity with which He adhered to His Father’s ways. His victory laid the foundation for enabling the kindly and priestly people of believers to make Him known as the Messiah to the nation of Israel, and to all the world. In His triumphal entrance into Jerusalem at the last Passover, He allowed the first bloom of that homage to break forth which hereafter is to be rendered by the whole world.

The deputies from Jerusalem, who, probably in the manner we have pointed out, had placed the Lord by their theocratic phrases on a pinnacle of the temple, could easily stand by Him on a mountain height in the wilderness as they made their last attempt to persuade Him.²⁶ But the mountain on which they placed Him was a mountain from which they could show Him all the kingdoms of the world, and their glory; therefore a ‘mountain higher than all other mountains’ (Isa 2:2)—Mount Zion, according to its spiritual significance, in the last age of the world. The tempter displayed to Him the prospect of the theocratic government of the world. Probably into this disclosure, plots against the Romans were introduced,—at all events unspiritual, ungodly plots, by which their object was to be attained. And Christ was urged to approve of their hierarchical plan for the conquest of the world. But to Him this demand appeared as a temptation to fall down before Satan and worship Him. And so it was in fact. If the hierarchical or political conqueror of the world avails himself of evil means for his supposed good ends, he acts in reality as a vassal of the prince of darkness, and has bowed the knee to him. The demand for an outward bowing of the knee the crafty enemy would not indeed, in the presence of the Lord, have been very ready to make. But the prospect he opened had an infinite power of sympathetic influence on the heart of Jesus. He cast a glance in spirit over his inheritance-the world. Countless hearts were bleeding, the noblest spirits were waiting for Him, the promise of the Father guaranteed Him this inheritance. All the motives of compassion, love, and holy zeal seemed to oblige Him to hasten to leave no means untried, but at any cost to make Himself forthwith Master of the world. At such a prospect all His feelings for the world must have been aroused and inflamed. But the maxims on which He was to proceed in immediately beginning the conquest of the world, were such as He was obliged to reject. The splendour of the end could in no wise excuse to Him the detestable means of falsehood and unrighteousness. He could not wish to have the beautiful world at the price of homage to Satan. Every representation of the kingdom of God in the world founded on untruthfulness, false appearances, hypocrisy, and force, appeared to Him fraught with most horrible ruin to the world, a most destructive procedure. His wrath against the tempter now flamed high; and with the words, ‘Get thee hence, Satan, for it is written, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God, and Him only shalt thou serve,’²⁷ He drove him from His presence.

By this victory, in which Christ renounced all pretensions to the immediate conquest of the world, He has gained the world in God’s sight, and in the depths of His spirit and of His fidelity to God has already begun to take possession of His kingdom. Since He has not sought the government of the world by base expedients, He has been invested with it by the Father. Luke observes, ‘that the devil departed from Him for a season.’ Though Jesus all through His life was tempted in a general manner, yet He had two great master temptations to withstand; first, the temptation of all the demon-inspired pleasure and fanaticism in the world, the temptation to self-delusion in egoistic morbid enthusiasm and in intoxicated arrogance; and next, the temptation of all the demoniac dislike and dread in the world, a temptation to faint-heartedness and despair. The second did not immediately make its appearance when the first was over. But after a certain breathing-time, Christ had to fight with Satan’s temptations to despair. The instruments of this second temptation were men—the representatives of the Jewish world of spirit, and this circumstance reflects light on the instruments of the first temptation.

The attitude assumed by the hierarchy against Jesus as soon as He appeared, was so hostile, that we can scarcely attribute it solely to His rejection of the rabbinical rules about the Sabbath. It leads us to conjecture, that the determined conflict between the spirit of Christ and the spirit of this hierarchy had already begun in secret when Christ publicly appeared.

If Christ narrated to His disciples the history of His temptation at the beginning of His intercourse with them, we may easily conceive that, in consideration of their weakness, He would avoid placing the heads of the nation as the instruments of Satan in the foreground of His description. Besides, these personages were properly the mere conveyers of a temptation which in its general form He had encountered before their appearance, and which seemed to Him, moreover, in its historical fulfilment, as an act of the element of ungodliness in the world generally, and in hell itself. Hence the symbolic form of the narrative may be explained.

When Jesus had gained His great victory, ‘angels came and ministered to Him.’ These words express primarily a spiritual and abiding fact. By this victory over the kingdom of darkness, Jesus was authenticated as the Prince of humanity, and humanity, which in Him had now withstood the severest temptations, appeared in fresh splendour. As a consequence of His moral elevation and the authentication He had received, Jesus was now the Prince of pure spirits, and in Him humanity was represented as a kingdom of spirits exalted over the world of angels. This, Jesus experienced in His own mind: heavenly sounds of congratulation greeted Him after the severe conflict. He received impressions from the world of spirits, and the homage of angels, when, by His victory over all sympathy with evil desires in the world, He had restored the full reciprocation with the joy of the pure spirit-world. And especially in this hour of joyous victory was He able to come into the most intimate spiritual intercourse with angels. But His victory over spirits became historically manifest by the entrance into His service of John and Peter, the noblest angels of the New Testament age.

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Notes

1. The various explanations of the history of the temptation are of very different values. They prove the difficulty of the subject by their manifold contrariety; but most of them contain some elements of truth, which in a living historic view of the transaction appear combined in a higher unity. The temptation especially appears in the grandest manner as an operation of Satan, provided Satan does not appear bodily according to the popular representations, but his operation is conceived as the result of the sympathetic co-operation of the designs of the ungodly spirit of the world with the designs of the kingdom of darkness. We cannot admit that Satan could have captivated the eye of Jesus by the immediate influence of delusive appearances. Meanwhile we must not fail to observe, that the great idealist illusions of the spirit of the world may be considered as juggleries of darkness, the power of which Christ must have experienced mediately, since they have mingled with the noblest aspirations and forebodings of mankind. Hitherto, when the temptation has been explained as an internal occurrence, the objection has arisen, that the essence of the temptation was thus treated as consisting in a free exercise of the imagination of Christ on the possibilities of sin. But this objection is disposed of, when the internal temptation is recognized as an attack of the sympathetic action of the spirit of His nation and of the world on His soul, to which it was necessary for Him to give a decisive repulse. The hypothesis that Christ was tempted by a single deputy of the Sanhedrim, a Pharisee, has been in later times most generally rejected; it had been brought into discredit owing to its rationalistic origin, and the uninteresting manner in which it was propounded and advocated. This does not prevent us from accepting what is true in it, for explaining the history of the temptation. That Christ could regard men as satanic tempters has been shown. The principal thing here (besides the ethical postulate, that every victory over temptation is complete only when it becomes a historical fact) is the chronological hint, that the return of the deputation to the Baptist from the Jordan to Jerusalem must have coincided with the return of Christ from the wilderness to the Jordan; further, the theocratic requirement that John owed to all his hearers, and must have given them, the clearest information respecting the Messiah; lastly, the historical circumstance, that the conflict between Christ and the hierarchy at Jerusalem came on so early in such a decisive manner. That exposition which would treat the narrative as a parable²⁸ has been disposed of by the remark, that in the construction of a parable historical persons are not made use of, and least of all does the maker of the parable introduce himself in the parable. Now we have seen, that the temptation, with all its simply defined historical precision, has an universal world-historical significance, and hence it is easily explained how it necessarily assumed in the representation a parabolic hue, as soon as the Lord, for good reasons, caused the historical elements of the temptation to retire behind the symbolic features which expressed their general meaning. (On this symbolism, see Hase, Leben Jesu, pp. 102, 103.) That explanation which would turn the whole transaction into a dream (Meyer, Stud. und Krit. 1831, Part 2), or into a vision (Paulus, das Leben Jesu, i. 142), we must regard as peculiarly unfortunate. A dream is not within the province of moral responsibility; and world-historical battles and spiritual conflicts are not fought out in the placid repose of a dream (see Ullmann). The state of ecstasy, too, must be regarded as the opposite pole to the state of moral wrestling in God’s champions, though it comes under the same category of true spiritual life. But in the life of Christ the idea of ecstasy is altogether excluded, since in Him the great antagonism between the inmost life in the spirit and common existence which rendered possible the ecstasy of the prophets, is lost in the harmony of perfected life. The most meagre view of all is indisputably that which regards the transaction as made up from a number of Old Testament fragments, as, for example, Elijah’s forty days’ fast, &c. (Strauss, Leben Jesu, p. 446). At all events, we do too much honour to such an exposition, which treats New Testament facts as a piece of mosaic made up of fragments from the Old Testament, as a composition of the merest outward similarities, to which also Jewish tradition must contribute, if we designate it a mythical exposition. Mythical exposition must throughout first point to the Christian idea-and then show that from an aversion to the incarnation and to fact, this idea has turned into the bypath of its spiritualistic embodiment in the myth. These collectanea of Old Testament analogies to New Testament facts have, however, served to draw attention to the rhythmical relations in the theocratic history.²⁹

2. When the first temptation is designated a temptation to ‘the sin of Genius,’ to convert the objects of sense into nourishment for the spirit (Weisse, Die evangel. Geschichte, ii. 22), we may notice the change in the modern spirit of the age, which for some time was for regarding all the pleasures of sense with fanatical untruthfulness as nourishment for the spirit, devotion and worship, but which now has passed into a decided dualism, which goes to the length of regarding as sin the ennobling of the pleasures of sense into nourishment for the spirit.

3. The chronological difficulties which would make the history of the temptation uncertain, can be regarded only as assumed, if it is observed how plainly John the Baptist (according to Joh 1:28-29), at the time when the deputation from Jerusalem left him; represents the divine attestation to Jesus at His baptism as a fact that had previously transpired. The day after the departure of the deputation, Jesus comes to him, and John exclaims: ‘Behold the Lamb of God,’ &c. This exclamation is a proof that Jesus had been pointed out as the Messiah by that extraordinary event. But even when the deputation came to John, the manifestation of Christ must have taken place; otherwise he could not have said of the Messiah that ‘He stood among them,’ an expression which presupposes the manifestation of the Messiah for Israel. Now, since the forty days’ sojourn of Jesus in the wilderness followed His baptism, and this sojourn was closed just after the return of the deputation, the baptism must have taken place about forty days before their arrival at the Jordan. Negative criticism, in dealing with this chronological difficulty, is just like a man’s standing close under a bridge, and complaining that he finds no passage over, all the while running down the river, and never thinking of turning upwards. ‘The Evangelist does not make the Baptist speak as if six weeks had intervened between the baptism of Jesus and the narrative he now gives.’ Thus Strauss, Leben Jesu, i. 428. This perfectly arbitrary assertion has, not without reason, met with ironical treatment from Ebrard.

1) Of John the Baptist Christ says (Matt. xi. 1S) he came neither eating nor drinking, although he lived on locusts and wild honey, the bread of the wilderness. [Meyer, in his thorough, unflinching way, says the fasting here ‘is to be understood absolutely, and refers to the convincing passages, Exod. xxxiv. 28, and 1 Kings xix. 8.—ED.]

2) Spinoza supported himself for several days on four sous.

3) Niklaus von der Flüe.

4) Saul, Acts ix. 9.

5) See W. Hoffman, das Leben Jesu, p. 315. Many examples of this sort have occurred in modern times.

6) Stier, Words of the Lord Jesus, i. 37 (Clark’s Tr.)

7) Strauss, Leben Jesu, i. 450.

8) Exod. xxxiv. 28.

9) 1 Kings xix. 8.

10) Neander, Life of Jesus Christ, p. 73 (Bohn).

11) ‘Transient illusions’ (Fluchtige Vorspiegelungen) the temptations of Jesus, according to this view, are called by Fleck (die Vertheidigung des Christenthums, p. 225).

12) Particularly according to the representation of this transaction by Weisse (die evangelische Geschichte, ii. 21).

13) [‘I could as soon accept the worst statements of the most degraded form of Arian creed, as believe that this temptation arose from any internal strugglings or solicitations,—I could as soon admit the most repulsive tenet .of a dreary Socinianism, as deem that it was enhanced by any self-engendered enticements, or hold that it was aught else than the assault of a desperate and demoniacal malice from without, that recognized in the nature of man a possibility of falling, and that thus far consistently, though impiously, dared even in the person of the Son of man to make proof of its hitherto resistless energies.’—Ellicott’s Hist. Lect., p. 111.—ED.]

14) [This view seems to receive confirmation especially from our Lord’s own experience in His last trial, when He had first to endure the ideal and spiritual conflict alone in the garden, and then the actual historical sufferings and death.—ED. ]

15) Ebrard, in his Gospel History, admits a visible appearance of Satan, without any further explanation.

16) See Ullmann, The Sinlessness of Jesus, p. 160 (Clark’s Tr., 2nd ed.)

17) Olshausen, Commentary on the New Testament, i, 167 (Clark’s Tr.) Krabbe, Vorlesungen tiber das Leben Jesu, p. 172.

18) That the view of the history of the temptation as a historical fact in a narrower sense has already existed in Rationalist forms (see Strauss, Leben Jesu, p. 442), and that it is marked as antiquated in its unmotived outward form, cannot prevent us from presenting it in a new form and on a fresh foundation. We have in this view not the least interest to settle the demonology, but we shall necessarily be led to it by the motives assigned. Those tempting hierarchs form only the historic heads of the whole transaction, and the organs of a temptation which in its deepest ground and connection we regard as altogether satanic.

19) Compare Isa, xxxv. 1.

20) The fantastic images of abundance in which Jewish tradition depicts the tranaformation of the world at its close are well known.

21) Göthe has in a masterly manner represented this temptation of Mephistopheles in his Faust, Second Part.

22) The expression, ἐπὶ παντὶ ῥήματι, is, according to the words in Deut. viii. 3, ‘everything that proceedeth out of the mouth of the Lord,’ referable to every creative word from the mouth of God—every vital operation.

23) Ps. xci. 11.

24) It was no impossibility to stand on the pinnacle of Solomon’s porch, and perhaps on other parts of the temple. See De Wette’s Erklärung des Evangelium Matt. p. 40. [Meyer, in a valuable note on this expression, inclines to the opinion that it points to the ridge of the στοὰ βασιλική, on the south side of the temple. For the giddy height of this altitude, see Josephus, Antiq. xv. 11, 5.—ED.]

25) Deut. vi. 16.

26) Tradition has pointed out the mountain Quarantania, situated in the wilderness, near Jericho, as the mountain of the temptation. ‘In one of its many ravines Jesus must have kept His fast of forty days” Winer, R. W. B. ii. 810. [‘This tradition, as well as the name Quarantania, appear not to be older than the age of the Crusades.’ Robinson, i. 568. See, however, Ellicott (Hist. Lect. p. 109), who conjectures ‘the lonely and unexplored chain of desert mountains, of which Nebo has been thought to form a part.’ This was formerly suggested by Michaelis. —ED.]

27) Deut. vi. 13.

28) Schleiermacher on Luke, p. 54, &c.

29) [A valuable criticism of the various theories of the temptation will be found in Meyer in loc.; by whom and by Ellicott (p. 110) the literature of the subject is given. The condemnations in the latter are too indiscriminate. Did he forget that what he calls ‘the monstrous opinion that the tempter was human’ was adopted by Bengel ? (‘Videtur tentator sub schemate scribe apparuisse.’) However, it is to be borne in mind, that in the other instances where Satan used human agency we are made distinctly aware of this by the narrative, whereas in the case before us no such intimation is given, and certainly a different impression conveyed. It is therefore mere hypothesis that Satan here acted through hierarchical or other human persons ; and some may be disposed to reject the hypothesis on the score of its needlessness. Besides that the supposition of intervening persons must be suspected of proceeding from and tending towards a disbelief of the power of Satan to act on the soul of man immediately, as spirit on spirit. From this suspicion the author clears himself above.—ED.]