over all its moral resources that its moral efforts can never involve any moral strain, such as is ex- perienced in temptation ; omniscience and omni- potence, therefore, cannot know the disturbance of feeling which is possible to limited knowledge and power. To ascribe these Divine attributes to the incarnate Son of God is to deny His liability to temptation, and to make His moral development a semblance and not a reality. Liability to tempta- tion, necessary to moral development, does not, however, imply any necessity to sin. There may be growth unto perfection, with a constant choice of good. Temptation does not arise only in a sinful nature. Natural instincts and appetites, which are morally neutral, become sinful only when seen to be in conflict with the will of God as revealed in conscience. The opinions, sentiments, and desires of sinful men may become the occasions of tempta- tion to a sinless nature. Temptation is not sin, involves no necessity of sin, although it brings the possibility of sin.
It was necessary for the fulfilment of Christ's vocation as the Saviour of men that He should be tempted without sin. His moral teaching gains force from His moral example, and He can be a moral example to us only because He passed through a human moral development. His own moral struggles enable Him to feel with us in ours (He 4^'). To condemn the sin of mankind (Ro 8^) it was needful for Him not only to suffer for sin, but also to overcome sin by withstanding its assaults.
The nature of His temptation was determined by His unique vocation. The lower passions and appetites seem never to have assailed Him. He was tempted to abuse His miraculous power, His privileged position. His supreme authority as Son of God, to fulfil the popular expectations instead of His own ideal of the Messiahship, to shrink from the agony and desolation of the Cross. His temi^tations transcended the common experience as much as He Himself did ; but, though possible to Him alone, they were as real for Him as are the loAver temptations for other men. See, further, the following article.
Literature. ^Butler, Anal. ch. v. ; Dods, The Prayer that- Teaches to Pray, 143 ff. ; Liddon, BL^ 512 ; UUmann, Sinless- ness of Jesus, 123 ff., 264 ff.; W. C. E. Newbolt, Gospel of Experience, 98 ; J. D. Jones, Elims of Life, 92 ; D. Fairweather, Bound in the Spirit, 33 ; W. H. M. H. Aitken, Temptation and Toil, 1-205 ; G. A. Smith, Forgiveness of Sins, 51 ; J. Stalker, The Four Men, 29. ALFRED E. GARVIE.
TEMPTATION (in the Wilderness). — [On the general subject of temptation see preced. article]. The continuousness and variety of our Lord's temp- tations have probably been obscured by the circum- stance that attention has been concentrated upon one episode in His life which is distinctively known as ' The Temptation.' This very significant inci- dent is fully related in Mt. (4i-'i) and Lk. (4^-'^^), mentioned in Mk. (P--^^), and omitted from the Fourth Gospel. St. Mark's account is of the briefest : ' And straightway the Spirit urges him forth into the desert. And he was in the desert forty days, tempted by Satan ; and he was with the wild beasts ; and' the angels ministered to him.'* The mention of 'wild beasts,' which is peculiar to Mark, is usually supposed to be intro- duced for the purpose of accentuating the solitari- ness of Jesus, and His remoteness from all human aid. But Professor Bevan {Trans, of Soc. of Hist. Theol. 1901-2) finds in this mention the key to
* The ' desert ' is possibly that known as Quarantania, from the forty days, and since the 12th cent, traditionally accepted as the same, a few miles from Jericho ; or it may have been, as Conder thinks, some miles farther south — the dreary desert which extends between the Dead Sea and the Hebron moun- tains. See his picturesque description, pp. 213 to 214 of h)« Handbook
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the whole incident. It seems that in the East, or at any rate in Persia, there is a traditional custom, called 'the subjugation of the jinn.' In order to achieve this victory the candidate retires to a desert place, fasts for forty days, and when the jinns appear in the forms of a lion, a tiger, and a dragon, he must hold his ground fearlessly. Doing so, power over the demons is attained. 'The conclusion,' saj's Pi-ofessor Bevan, 'which we may draw from these facts is that the storj' of the Temptation, in its original form, was a de- scription of a practice by means of which it was believed that man could acquire the power of con- trolling the demons.' The analogy is interesting. Our Lord in this critical conflict with Satan did ' bind the strong man,' and secured that in all future encounters He would conquer. But is there any evidence at all that the Persian custom pre- vailed among the Jews ? Is there any ground for supposing either that our Lord would follow such a custom, or, on the other hand, that there is no foundation for the story of the Temptation in the facts of His career? And is not the simple ex- pression, fjv /xera. tuv d-qpioiv, inadequate to suggest such a conflict as is supposed ? *