is the uncontrolled and mutually contagious mechanism that
leads to the vicious circle of aggressive challenges and aggres-
sive reactions. Although psychology suggests that it is some-
times liberating to allow one’s anger an honest expression,
Menninger rightly warns: “But there is always a temptation
to use it as a whip, and what begins as a device for relief con-
tinues as a weapon for aggression” (1973, p. 144).
SOCIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES. The broad theological ex-
pression “sin of the world” is given sharper contours in mod-
ern studies on “institutionalized temptation.” In his book
Our Criminal Society (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1969), Edwin
M. Shur has an apt formulation: “In a sense, existing patterns
of crime represent a price we pay for structuring society as
we have structured it” (p. 9). In a society and culture that
emphasize “having” over “being,” with an educational system
oriented to personal success and a whole economic system
that encourages increasing consumption, people yield
thoughtlessly to temptations, and nobody feels guilty. “No
one thinks sin was involved” (Menninger, 1973, p. 120).
The “respectable crimes” of the wealthy and powerful, their
unpunished corruption, and their clever manipulations are
constant incitement for others to further injustice and dis-
honesty in smaller matters. The little thief is caught and con-
demned to a prison system in which massive temptations are
forced upon inexperienced transgressors of the law.
The people of wealthy countries have adopted lifestyles
inseparably connected with the predatory exploitation of the
earth’s resources and pollution of the environment. Here we
see temptations of planetary dimensions that increase the
tensions between countries of free enterprise and those of
massive state capitalism. How many horrifying temptations
are involved in the arms race, the arms trade, and, above all,
the nuclear threat! One source of the massive “institutional-
ized temptations” is the lack of prophetic voices; another is
the unwillingness to pay earnest attention to those voices that
might be heard.
THEOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVES. In a brief synthesis of theo-
logical perspectives that recur continuously, the point of de-
parture for the Christian is Jesus having been tempted as we
are: “Since he himself has passed through the test of suffer-
ing, he is able to help those who are meeting their test now”
(Heb. 2:18). The church fathers stressed the point that it was
after his baptism that Jesus underwent the temptation, and
they connect this with the final test of his passion. Similarly,
those baptized in Christ can best face temptation and suffer-
ing by putting their trust in Christ and holding fast to their
baptismal commitment.
Jesus overcame temptation not just by enduring the suf-
fering it brought but by making this very suffering the su-
preme sign of God’s love and saving solidarity. That this love
is the goal of all Christians is revealed by gospels that unmask
the temptations involved in clinging to laws while betraying
the covenant, now understood as the supreme law of unself-
ish, all-embracing love between God and humankind.
Another biblical direction is to combat evil by doing
good, to overcome violent injustice by doing the truth of love
in nonviolent commitment (cf. Rom. 12:21; 1 Thes. 5:15; 1
Pt. 3:9; and above all, Mt. 5). For believers, all temptations—
but particularly those arising from the vicious circle of vio-
lence—are a challenge to sanctity, to redemptive love. An
unrenounceable perspective grows out of Paul’s understand-
ing of the combat between sarx and pneuma, whereby false
images of love and freedom are exposed by searching whole-
heartedly for true love aided by the promptings of the spirit
(cf. Gal. 5:13, 6:2).SEE ALSO Apocatastasis; Evil; Fall, The.BIBLIOGRAPHY
There are innumerable books and articles concerning the tempta-
tion of Jesus and, in that light, temptation in general. The
following books merit special attention: Ernest Best’s The
Temptation and the Passion: The Markan Soteriology (Cam-
bridge, 1965) and Jacques Dupont’s Les tentations de Jésus au
désert (Paris, 1968). Both books contain excellent bibliogra-
phies. A comprehensive presentation of the church fathers’
explanation of the biblical texts and their application to the
understanding of Christian life is found in Santino Raponi’s
Tentazione ed Esistenza Cristiana (Rome, 1974). On the bib-
lical use of the term peirasmos, see Heinrich Seesemann’s
Theological Dictionary of the New Testament, edited by Ger-
hard Friedrich (Grand Rapids, 1968), vol. 6, pp. 23–36. See
Horst Beintker’s study Die Überwindung der Anfechtung bei
Luther (Berlin, 1954) for an overview of Martin Luther’s ap-
proach to temptation from the perspective of the doctrine of
justification by faith. Helmut Thielicke’s Theologie der An-
fechtung (Tübingen, 1949) is representative of a good part of
Protestant theology’s discussion of the issue. Also important
is Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Creation and Fall: A Theological In-
terpretation of Genesis 1–3 and Temptation (1937–1938; New
York, 1965). While at times emphasizing the power of Satan,
Bonhoeffer never allows for man’s exculpation. His ideas
seem to reflect the time of great affliction for the church in
Germany.
Of the numerous studies about the impact of a poisoned environ-
ment and a defective culture and society on temptation, Re-
inhold Niebuhr’s Moral Man and Immoral Society (New
York, 1932) and Edwin M. Shur’s Our Criminal Society (En-
gelwood Cliffs, N. J., 1969) are noteworthy. In his much-
read book, Whatever Became of Sin? (New York, 1973), Karl
Menninger points to the mechanisms and temptations of de-
nying sin and thus, also, human freedom and responsibility.
C. S. Lewis attempts to unmask real temptation in his widely
known book The Screwtape Letters (New York, 1946). Hel-
mut Knufmann reflects on novelists’ treatment of tempta-
tion as a theme in his book Das Böse in den Liaisons
Dangereuses de Choderlos de Laclos (Munich, 1965).
New Sources
Brewer, Talbot. “The Character of Temptation: Towards a More
Plausible Kantian Moral Philosophy.” Pacific Philosophical
Quarterly 83 (June 2002): 103–131.
Schiavo, Luigi. “The Temptation of Jesus: The Eschatological
Battle and the New Ethic of the First Followers of Jesus inTEMPTATION 9073