tary service and grant one’s own government a blind pre-
sumption of righteousness in respect to armaments, arms
sales, and military actions. Perhaps here, however, we are be-
ginning to perceive a major shift in Western Christianity’s
approach to the theme of temptation.
DEFINITION OF TEMPTATION. For Immanuel Kant, tempta-
tion is the paradoxical expression of the human person, des-
tined by nature for the good yet inclined to do evil. He de-
fines temptation as a challenge to live one’s freedom for good
in the purest way.
In the Septuagint, and consequently in Christian tradi-
tion, the Greek word peirasmos indicates quite different con-
cepts in different contexts. Often it refers to sinful people
“tempting God,” murmuring against him and challenging
him in unbelief and distrust (cf. Ex. 17:1–7). The New Tes-
tament, too, warns against this temptation of humans “to
tempt God,” to challenge him (1 Cor. 10:9), to defy him in
disobedience (Heb. 3:8), to request from him miraculous in-
terventions at a whim or for purposes of self-exaltation (cf.
Mt. 4:7: “You are not to put the Lord your God to the test”).
Most frequently, however, the word temptation is used
to describe humans being tempted in various ways. Two
forms of peirasmos have to be distinguished carefully. One
concerns the various troubles and trials seen as an opportuni-
ty, or kairos, for the believer to strengthen his faith, his en-
durance, and, finally, his capacity to share in Christ’s re-
demptive suffering. James 1:2–3 describes this kind of
peirasmos: “Whenever you have to face trials of many kinds,
count yourselves supremely happy in the knowledge that
such testing of your faith breeds fortitude, and if you give
fortitude full play you will go on to complete a balanced
character.” Sometimes only the victorious conclusion of such
a trial allows the positive evaluation of the event, as in James
or, even more evidently, in the beatitudes (Mt. 5:11–12, Lk.
6:21–23).
The other kind of peirasmos refers to temptation in the
sense of endangering salvation, that is, when the person is
assaulted from within and/or from without by godless pow-
ers aimed at his downfall. The Lord exhorts us to pray that
we may not be brought to such dangerous tests: “And lead
us not into temptation” (Mt. 6:13, Lk. 11:4). Christ warns
his disciples that his own terrible trial can become for them
a dangerous test: “Stay awake, all of you; and pray that you
may be spared, that you may not enter into temptation” (Mk.
14:38).
Martin Luther is particularly anxious that we do not
confuse those tests in which God guides us through the trial
from beginning to end with those temptations into which
we walk self-confidently from the start and thus expose our-
selves to the danger of downfall.
TEMPTATION AND THE TEMPTER. While the scripture warns
us against the tempter in his various disguises, the main em-
phasis is on our own “heart,” our personal response to temp-
tations. The Bible calls on Christians to take responsibility
by consistently rebuking the sinner who wants to exculpate
himself by inculpating others.
Temptation arises from within. James is most explicit:
“Temptation arises when a man is enticed and lured away
by his own lust” (1:14). Here the author of James follows the
main line of the synoptic Gospels, as when Jesus calls for
change of heart, for purification of one’s inmost thoughts
and desires: “It is from within men’s hearts that evil inten-
tions emerge” (Mk. 7:20). James speaks of epithumia
(“desire”), which in the Jewish thought of the time referred
to the ambivalent impulses and inclinations (or yetser) as-
signed to Adam and Eve in rabbinic literature to explain their
capacity for being tempted. Augustine’s term concupiscence
does not correspond exactly to yetser. While the Hebrew
scriptures and rabbinic literature try to understand human
vulnerability to temptation as epithumia, Augustine believes
temptation to be based on our heritage of sin from Adam.
We may understand concupiscence as that inner inclination
for temptation and sin, the intensity of which depends on
unrepented sins, the weakness or lack of a fundamental op-
tion for God and for the good, and the attraction to sin that
comes from a sinful world around us, where the sins of the
past continue to poison the human environment.
This same idea is present also in thought about the
struggle that exists in our inmost being between sarx and
pneuma (or “body” and “spirit”). For Paul, temptation mani-
fests in our lower nature, the body, and is supported by the
collective selfishness and arrogance present in all humanity.
The sarx—and with it, temptation—loses power to the de-
gree that we are renewed and guided by the pneuma.
God does not tempt anyone. James’s great concern that
“God is untouched by evil” (1:14) already existed in Jewish
wisdom literature. The main concern of the oldest Israelite
tradition, however, was the absolute rejection of any kind of
dualism: God has absolute sovereignty. The distinction
found in this tradition between being “put to the test” by
dangerous temptation or by trials destined to purify or refine
had not yet been neatly elaborated.
A striking example is in a comparison of the story of
David’s temptation regarding a census, as told in 2 Samuel
with the later story in 1 Chronicles. The first account says,
“The anger of Yahveh once again blazed out against the Isra-
elites, and he incited David against them. ‘Go,’ he said, ‘take
a census of Israel and Judah’” (2 Sm. 24:1). In those days a
census was considered an attack on God’s prerogative to give
increase to his people. Hence David was punished by a pesti-
lence that diminished the nation. The author of 1 Chronicles
is more careful about the image of God as one of absolute
goodness; he gives another version: “Satan rose against David
to take a census of the Israelites” (1 Chr. 21). In this later
tradition monotheism had become so firmly established that
the introduction of a tempter inimical to God’s people was
not to be feared.
The wisdom literature provided helpful distinctions and
directions of thought. The authors were careful not to allow9070 TEMPTATION