{"id":5466,"date":"2022-04-22T05:00:25","date_gmt":"2022-04-22T12:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theologicalapologetics\/?p=5466"},"modified":"2022-08-31T14:54:42","modified_gmt":"2022-08-31T21:54:42","slug":"the-first-temptations-of-christ-the-temptation-of-the-eyes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theologicalapologetics\/2022\/04\/the-first-temptations-of-christ-the-temptation-of-the-eyes\/","title":{"rendered":"The First Temptation(s) Of Christ: The Temptation of the Eyes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

In this series<\/a> I have looked at each of Jesus\u2019 temptations in the wilderness. First I discussed a \u201cproto-temptation,\u201d the test of waiting<\/a>, that precedes Jesus\u2019 three direct temptations by the<\/em> Satan. In the second article, I looked at the trial of the body<\/a> and in the last one I examined the test of the ego<\/a>. In this final entry, I will look at Satan\u2019s most direct attack against Jesus\u2013 the temptation of the eyes, or covetousness.<\/p>\n

All The Kingdoms of the World<\/h2>\n

Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; <\/span>9\u00a0<\/sup>and he said to him, \u201cAll these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me.\u201d <\/span>10\u00a0<\/sup>Jesus said to him, \u201cAway with you, Satan! for it is written,<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n
\n

\u2018Worship the Lord your God,<\/span>
\nand serve only him.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

Matt 4:8-10<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Now the final and most straightforward demand comes from God\u2019s arch-nemesis. Satan longs to be worshipped as if God. It is an aggression against God\u2019s first commandment:<\/p>\n

2\u00a0<\/sup>I am the Lord<\/span> your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery; <\/span>3\u00a0<\/sup>you shall have no other gods before me.<\/span><\/p>\n

Exodus 20:2-3<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This has been the evil one\u2019s sole desire since his fall. It will be his sole desire until the day God expells him, and any permitted authority he may have over this world, to his final place of torment (Rev 20:7-10). What Satan wants is to be a non-creature, to be the author of his own being. Satan\u2019s grand offer to mankind is to follow his lead in this primal rebellion\u2013 for man to be self-deluded enough to think and act as if he were his own self-creation<\/a>. Milton put these truthful words in the mouth of the adversary:<\/p>\n

When this creation was? rememberest thou
\nThy making, while the Maker gave thee being?
\nWe know no time when we were not as now;
\nknow none before us, self-begot, self-raised
\nBy our own quickening power.<\/p>\n

Milton,\u00a0Paradise Lost,\u00a0<\/em>5.856-61<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The Myth of the Self-Made Man<\/h2>\n

This fantastic lie, this terrible untruth, was reiterated in the 20th-century by one of the most prominent philosophers of despair, Jean-Paul Sartre. Sartre\u2019s dictum \u201cexistence precedes essence\u201d acts as a credo of modern humanism. It rejects both the ancient Greek categorization of man as\u00a0rational animal<\/em>, as well as the more ancient Hebraic claim of man made in the image of a personal God\u2013man as\u00a0imago Dei<\/em>. Instead, as Steven Crowell points out, the existentialist claim confers the power of continual self-creation to man:<\/p>\n

In contrast to other entities, whose essential properties are fixed by the kind<\/em> of entities they are, what is essential to a human being\u2014what makes her who<\/em> she is\u2014is not fixed by her type but by what she makes of herself, who she becomes. The fundamental contribution of existential thought lies in the idea that one\u2019s identity is constituted neither by nature nor by culture, since to \u201cexist\u201d is precisely to constitute such an identity.<\/p>\n

Crowell, \u201cExistentialism<\/a>\u201d in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Of course the existentialist view of man is deeply incoherent and self-defeating. For the claim that man exists without a fixed nature or any essential properties, but continually creates himself, presupposes at least one essential property, the property of \u201cbeing able to create himself.\u201d But if man possesses this property, then there is something fixed about man. There is some nature or essence to him and something shared by\u00a0all men<\/em>.<\/p>\n

A \u201cman,\u201d then, would be, in essence<\/em>,\u00a0\u201cthe kind of thing that makes itself.\u201d But that is still a \u201ckind\u201d of being. Further this would be something objective about man. It would either be true that man is the kind of thing that creates himself, or it would be false. For it most certainly could not be both (a logical contradiction), nor could it be neither (the law of excluded middle).<\/p>\n

Thus, what would be essential to man would be\u00a0self-creation<\/em>. But the idea that man can create himself,\u00a0literally<\/em>, is ridiculous. Further, the idea that man is identical to his choices is simply incoherent. A person and a person\u2019s actions are obviously\u00a0not\u00a0<\/em>an identity relationship. An individual person is not the sum total of their thoughts, choices or actions. There is something more there than just those features, since those things cannot exist apart from a thinker, a chooser and an actor. The writer of this article and \u201cAnthony Costello\u201d may stand in an exact relationship of identity, but the article itself and \u201cAnthony Costello\u201d clearly do not.<\/p>\n

And it is for reasons like these that analytic philosophers, even atheist ones, have normally rejected the existentialist view of man. Some have considered existentialism little more than a mere jumbling of words. Man, the scientific modernist will say, certainly has some essential properties, even if they are endowed not by God but by natural selection. This at least puts the ancient Aristotelian view back on the table, if not the biblical one.<\/p>\n

Personal identity may be shaped in part<\/em> by nature (in the materialist sense) and in part<\/em> by culture, and, in part<\/em>, by our decisions given that nature and our culture. However, personal identity is not identical to these. These do not exhaust what man, or any given person, is. To see ourselves for what we actually are<\/a> is something Satan desperately wants to block from view.<\/p>\n

Satan\u2019s Means To Satan\u2019s End<\/h2>\n

Now that we have a better idea of what Satan\u2019s end game is, what are Satan\u2019s means to that end? The author of the Gospel of Matthew, let\u2019s call him \u201cMatthew\u201d to be iconoclastic, is clearly telling us what Sartre said roughly 1900 years after Matthew\u2019s inspired text. It is the Devil who tempts us, who speaks with forked tongue to our human nature, urging us to choose our nature as he has\u00a0tried to choose his own<\/i>. For Satan did have a choice to make that affected the central part of his nature. That choice was, and still is, to serve God or to rebel against the Creator.<\/p>\n

It is Satan who wants us to think as he does. It is Satan who wants us to choose in the same way he did. Satan calls us to rebel against the supposed shackles of God\u2019s authority and lie to ourselves about our own origins.\u00a0His primary method of temptation in this evil plot is to offer man what in reality is not man\u2019s to have: the things of this world. For if men believe they can possess the creation, all the goods of the world<\/em>,\u00a0then they will misperceive themselves as their own gods. In our quest for and attainment of possessions<\/a>, men view themselves as creators of that which they possess, authorities over the objects of creation. This is the nature of covetousness, wanting what is not yours so as to see yourself as lord over it.<\/p>\n

And so Satan offers Jesus\u2019 human nature \u201call the kingdoms of the world\u201d in exchange for Jesus\u2019 loyalty\u2013an exchange that would keep Jesus\u2019 human nature in bondage to the ancient lie of self-creation and possession. It is the archetypal devil\u2019s bargain, one dramatized over and over again throughout history: in our art, our literature and our entertainment.<\/p>\n

However, when Satan offers Jesus the world, he is offering Christ His own creation. For it is through the Son that all things were made:<\/p>\n

15\u00a0<\/sup>He is the image of the invisible God, the firstborn of all creation; <\/span>16\u00a0<\/sup>for in him all things in heaven and on earth were created, things visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or powers\u2014all things have been created through him and for him. <\/span>17\u00a0<\/sup>He himself is before all things, and in him all things hold together.<\/span><\/p>\n

Col 1:15-17<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Moreover, it is to the Son that all things will once again return:<\/p>\n

19\u00a0<\/sup>For in him all the fullness of God was pleased to dwell, <\/span>20\u00a0<\/sup>and through him God was pleased to reconcile to himself all things, whether on earth or in heaven, by making peace through the blood of his cross.<\/span><\/p>\n

Col 1:19-20<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Satan believes he can break the trust between Father and Son, attacking the Trinitarian relationship itself. He believes he can do this by tempting the Son with what the Son has Himself made and will, after His death and resurrection, once again assume authority over.<\/p>\n

But Satan cannot do this, because Satan himself is but one of Christ\u2019s own creations. He too is subject to the Father and to the Son. Nothing can ever alter the relationship between the unconditioned and the conditioned, between the eternal and the temporal, the necessary and the contingent. God is God, Satan is the creature.<\/p>\n

To resist this final temptation to his flesh, all Jesus has to do is remind Satan of this, the most brute of all brute facts:<\/p>\n

Jesus said to him, \u201cAway with you, Satan! for it is written,<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\n
\n

\u2018Worship the Lord your God,<\/span>
\nand serve only him.\u2019\u201d<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Application #1: Only God Is Worthy of Our Full Devotion<\/h2>\n

Satan creates nothing. Just like man, he doesn\u2019t have that kind of power. Satan, like man, can only take what God has made and either arrange it in new and creative ways or distort and abuse it. Unlike man, Satan made a choice now fixed for eternity\u2013 the choice to take and distort, to grab and abuse. Theologian Ron Highfield explains why this is so:<\/p>\n

Notice that the devil defines worship of him as a means to an end\u2026The devil has to use God\u2019s creation to entice people to worship him. After all, why would one worship the devil as an end in itself? But the command to worship God alone is an absolute command. God is the only being worthy of worship simply because of God\u2019s surpassing worth\u2026.It is not worship but flattery to praise a being merely as a means to an end.<\/p>\n

Highfield,\u00a0God, Freedom and Human Dignity<\/em>,\u00a0155<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words, to worship anything so as to get something other than the thing of worship is not true worship, for it shows that the thing being worshipped is not good enough in itself to satisfy our deepest longings or quench our deepest thirst.<\/p>\n

And so we must be aware of how the good things of the earth: good food, good sex, material wealth, children, natural beauty, positions of authority, art, leisure and any other created thing dare not be seen as itself an end or object of our full devotion. Satan\u2019s trap is to confuse our love of God\u2019s good creation with God Himself. Highfield continues:<\/p>\n

The world is full of beautiful and good things. Each of them comes from the hand of God, but none is worthy of worship. They were created to be used and enjoyed under the right conditions and at the right time. But everything in God\u2019s creation points beyond itself to God, who made it. Only as a gift from God can a created thing be used and enjoyed rightly.<\/p>\n

Highfield, 155<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Application #2: It Matters Who Gives You Good Things, Why and When<\/h2>\n

The second thing to notice about the good things of the world, is who is offering them to you. In our lives we are often presented with good things. However, one thing to notice is who gives us those things. It might matter, and matter greatly, when good things are offered to us, why they are being offered and\u00a0who is offering them.<\/p>\n

It is one thing for me to give a bit of candy to my 4-year old son, who I love self-sacrificially. I, as his father, have no other desire than to see him enjoy the candy he loves so much. However, if a stranger emerges from a dark alley and says to my 4-year old, \u201chey little boy, would you like a piece of candy?,\u201d it is not the candy that is the concern, but the source offering it.<\/p>\n

Alternatively, the source can be good, but the timing or context bad. If once again I am the offerer of the candy, the source of the gift is good. However, if I, being a flawed and finite soul, offer my 4-year old the candy after he throws a temper tantrum or hits his brother, then my gift is no longer good, even though, again, the candy itself still is. The mode of the offering is evil due to my sinful nature and my erroneous offering of the gift at the wrong time and under the wrong circumstances.<\/p>\n

Satan hates mankind, the crown of God\u2019s creative work. His only desire is to lure you into the back alley of the world, by pretending to offer you its goods, and do horrible and unthinkable things to you in that dark corridor. He has no plan for you except your abuse. To follow Satan, to fail to resist his temptations, is to do self-harm. It is, and ever will be, the road to self-destruction, not to self-creation.<\/p>\n

Alternatively, once can follow the example of Christ. And in following Christ, who resists the evil one and, on our behalf, redeems our human nature, our essential human nature<\/em>, we can have not only\u00a0all the kingdoms of the world<\/em>, but we can have\u00a0the King<\/em> of the world. And to have the King Himself is far better than having any of His kingdoms.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In this series I have looked at each of Jesus\u2019 temptations in the wilderness. First I discussed a \u201cproto-temptation,\u201d the test of waiting, that precedes Jesus\u2019 three direct temptations by the Satan. In the second article, I looked at the trial of the body and in the last one I examined the test of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4541,"featured_media":5491,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14,112,20,82,31],"tags":[710,161,756,722,725],"class_list":["post-5466","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biblical-theology","category-cultural-apologetics","category-existentialism","category-metaphysics","category-spiritual-formation","tag-gospel-of-matthew","tag-jean-paul-sartre","tag-john-milton","tag-ron-highfield","tag-satan"],"yoast_head":"\nThe First Temptation(s) Of Christ: The Temptation of the Eyes<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"In this series I have looked at each of Jesus' temptations in the wilderness. 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He has a\u00a0BA in German from the University\u00a0of Notre Dame, an MA in Christian\u00a0Apologetics, and MA in Theology from\u00a0Talbot School of Theology, Biola\u00a0University, where he was awarded\u00a0the 2018 Baker Book Award for Excellence\u00a0in Theology.\u00a0He has published in journals such\u00a0as Luther Rice Journal of Christian\u00a0Studies, the Journal of Christian Legal Thought and the Journal of Christian Higher Education. He co-authored two chapters in Josh and Sean McDowell's Evidence\u00a0That Demands a Verdict (2016), and has published apologetics' resources for Ratio Christi Ministries\u00a0and in\u00a0magazines such\u00a0as Touchstone. He has made online\u00a0contributions to The Christian Post\u00a0and Patheos. Anthony is a US Army\u00a0Veteran, former 82D Airborne\u00a0paratrooper and OEF veteran.\u00a0Currently, he is the president of\u00a0The Kirkwood Center for Theology\u00a0and Ethics (kirkwoodcenter.org), a\u00a0ministry dedicated to helping the\u00a0local church navigate culture, and is the host of the Theology and Ethics Podcast of the Kirkwood Center.","sameAs":["http:\/\/www.kirkwoodcenter.org","https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/anthony.costello.54922\/","https:\/\/twitter.com\/kirkwoodcenter"],"url":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theologicalapologetics\/author\/acostello\/"}]}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theologicalapologetics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5466","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theologicalapologetics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theologicalapologetics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theologicalapologetics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4541"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theologicalapologetics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5466"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theologicalapologetics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5466\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theologicalapologetics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5491"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theologicalapologetics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5466"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theologicalapologetics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5466"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/theologicalapologetics\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5466"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}