This essay was written as a final for a course on existential philosophy in the fall of 2017.
On the road to Caesarea Philippi, Jesus asked his disciples, “Who do you say that I am?” Having spent nearly three years accompanying their rabbi through the Judean countryside, the disciples may have thought this an odd question. Was the question a trap, like the inquisitive snares often set by the Pharisees? Surely by now the disciples knew that their master was Jesus the Nazarene, son of Joseph the carpenter. Among all the possible replies to Jesus’ question, only Simon’s answer has survived; “You are the Messiah.”
Simon Peter’s reply marks a pivotal turn in the Jesus narrative, especially when Jesus himself had previously urged the disciples (even demons) to remain quiet about who he truly was. Here, Jesus urges his disciples to name their relationship with him. Despite Peter’s messianic proclamation, he does not truly understand the reality of Jesus being “the Son of the living God.” Jesus, so disturbed by Peter’s disbelief in the death and resurrection of Christ, rebukes Peter, calling him “Satan.”
Jesus’ rebuke references an earlier story in the gospel where, following his baptism in the Jordan River, Jesus was tempted in the desert by Satan three times. Ultimately, Satan puts Jesus’ Sonship on trial. In the temptations, it is not his contemporaries or peers who must answer this question, but Jesus himself who must accept, before God, who he truly is.
This commentary on Jesus’ temptations in the desert presents an existential christology deeply influenced by Soren Kierkegaard’s theory on the self as it pertains to despair. Kierkegaard defines the self as;
(a) a synthesis of polar opposites – “of infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity;” (b) self-relating – ‘a relation that relates itself to itself;’ and (c) ultimately dependent on God – ‘a deprived, established relation, a relation that … in relating itself to itself relates itself to another’ (Sickness Unto Death, 13-14). (Glenn, 5).
In The Sickness Unto Death, Kierkegaard outlines three stages in which a person passes through to become a self. Despair is that sickness unto death which prevents every person from truly becoming a self. Kierkegaard delineates three forms of despair that correspond to the three dimensions of the self.
(a) insofar as they involve misrelation among the components of the self as synthesis, and (b) insofar as they are characterized by varying degrees of self-consciousness and self-assertion. Finally, he analyzes (c) despair as sin. (Glenn, 6)
Because the temptations in the desert, taken here from Matthew’s gospel, are concerned with testing the identity of Jesus as the Son of God, it is only fitting that each temptation be analyzed through the lens of Kierkegaard’s stages of despair and self-becoming. The first temptation portrays Jesus in crises over the constituent parts of his existence, over materiality and spirituality. In the second temptation, Satan lures Jesus to avoid death and the painful awareness of mortal existence. The third presents Satan as absolute defiance who tempts Jesus to reject his dependence on God and place his identity in the realm of earthly power.
Kierkegaard states that “With every increase in the degree of consciousness, and in proportion to that increase, the intensity of despair increases: the more consciousness the more intense the despair,” (Perkins, 72). Therefore, with each temptation, Jesus becomes more conscious of his self as Son of God, while at the same time becoming more painfully aware of despair. Finally, this paper will examine the Christological implications within Kierkegaard’s religious and philosophical world-view. Jesus will be presented as the Christ who, while “resurrection and life,” willingly plunged himself into death, meeting with full force the despair that infects all of humankind.
The First Temptation: Bread or Manna
“Then Jesus was led up by the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted by the devil,” (Matthew 4:1). It’s important to note here the importance of “spirit” within this narrative. Directly before the temptations, Jesus is baptized in the river Jordan where “suddenly the heavens were opened to him and he saw the Spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him” (Matthew 3:16). In this same instance, Jesus is declared the Son of God, the most beloved. Within the first few chapters of Matthew, Jesus is baptized, identified, and accompanied by the Spirit. For Kierkegaard, “A human being is spirit. But what is spirit? Spirit is the self,” (Perkins, 43). Not only is Jesus a human being, but he is God-made-man. Therefore, the struggle in the wilderness is not only a struggle of a “human self,” but the “cosmic-self,” the relation of humanity and God relating to itself.
Verse two states that Jesus became famished only after his forty days of fasting in the desert. It is almost as if after forty days Jesus suddenly became aware of his hunger, while previously he remained ignorant of the fact. It is then, in this state of great hunger and material weakness, that Satan comes to tempt Jesus. “If you are the Son of God, command these stones to become loaves of bread,” (Matthew 4:3). Satan immediately plays on the hunger of Christ and the concern over material, basic needs. The pain of Jesus’ hunger is certainly overbearing, and it would be reasonable for Jesus to want to satisfy his hunger. However, he refuses and states emphatically that “One does not live by bread alone, but by every word that comes from the mouth of God,” (Matthew 4:4).
A common misconception about Jesus’ profession is that he is rejecting bread all together in favor of a life only concerned about the transcendent. However, a key word in the verse is “alone.” This profession is not rejecting bread all together but including it as a feature of human existence. Bread is not the only form of nourishment in human life. To quote Kierkegaard again, a self is a synthesis “of infinite and the finite, of the temporal and the eternal, of freedom and necessity,” (Perkins, 44). At this stage of self-becoming, “the specific forms of despair… are characterized by an overstress on one aspect of the self as synthesis with a corresponding understress on (or ‘lack of’) its polar opposite,” (Glenn, 7). Bread, along with all materiality, is simply one side of the coin. The transcendent, or in this passage, every word of God, represents the other side. As Kierkegaard says,
To become oneself is to become concrete. But to become concrete is neither to become finite nor to become infinite, for that which is to become concrete is indeed a synthesis. Consequently, the progress of the becoming must be an infinite moving away from itself in the infinitizing of the self, and an infinite coming back to itself in the finitizing process. (Perkins, 59)
Because Jesus is starving, there is an overstress on the need for physical or material nourishment. Yet, even in his starvation, Jesus recognizes the temptation to overstress the finite in times when the finite is severely lacking. To only focus on one opposite is to cease being a synthesis, and therefore, to cease being a self. Jesus overcomes this temptation and progresses to deeper and more intense forms of human despair.
The Second Temptation: Life or Death
“Then the devil took him to the holy city and placed him on the pinnacle of the temple, saying to him, ‘If you are the Son of God, throw yourself down; for it is written, ‘He will command his angels concerning you,’ and ‘On their hands they will bear you up, so that you will not dash your foot against a stone,’” (Matthew 4:5-6). At this stage of the temptations, Jesus has become painfully aware of his human condition. First, hunger woke him from his previous ignorance; now, Jesus must face the event that awaits every person – death. For Jesus, this event is especially tragic because his death represents the epitome of God-forsakenness. It is a contradiction that Jesus, who is God, should be forsaken by God on the bloody cross. Kierkegaard, while accepting this paradox, argues that only God could reach such depths of despair.
One with the Father, but if they are one, how then can the Father forsake him at any moment! And yet he says: My God, my God, why have you forsaken me! Thus it was not true that he was one with the Father. Oh, what extremity of superhuman suffering! Oh, a human heart would have burst a little sooner – only the God-man must suffer all through his final suffering – Then he dies. (Kierkegaard, 64)
The temptation, then, to save himself from death is a temptation to avoid the greatest trial set out before him by God. While each level of consciousness brings a greater understanding of the self, it also brings a greater sense of despair which becomes harder to avoid. Jesus lives constantly in the shadow of the cross, and as he becomes more aware of his self, his death becomes unavoidable.
As Christ’s death approaches and the shadow of the cross draws near, the path becomes “narrower and narrower to the end, to death,” (FSE, 61), narrowing to the point at which there is no escape from its destination – except through the temptation to forsake the path itself. (Podmore, 207)
However, bodily death is not the greatest danger posed to humankind, and by becoming overburdened by the thought of bodily death, one is thrown back into despair. For Kierkegaard, the Christian, unlike the natural man, is not put off by death. Bodily death is simply a step along the journey, the end of which is a self completely transparent in Godself. The despairing person is always truly despairing over his/her self. Because they wish to be something other than themselves, despairing people wish to be rid of themselves, a sort of wish for death. However, the self is eternal and therefore cannot truly perish in the way the despairing person wants it to.
So to be sick unto death is, not to be able to die – yet not as though there were hope of life; no, the hopelessness in this case is that even the last hope, death, is not available. When death is the greatest danger, one hopes for life, but when one becomes acquainted with an even more dreadful danger, one hopes for death. So when the danger is so great that death has become one’s hope, despair is the disconsolateness of not being able to die. (Perkins, 48)
Therefore, Satan’s temptation to overcome death is a temptation to be other than Jesus’ self and to fruitlessly attempt to remove Jesus’ painful awareness of his own mortality. Jesus reflects again on this temptation when he professes to his disciples that “he must go to Jerusalem and undergo great suffering at the hands of the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.” It is Peter who, having just professed Jesus as the Messiah, rejects Jesus’ eventual death, arguing that “this must never happen to you.” Jesus rebukes Peter for viewing his life only in human terms instead of the divine. Jesus’ exclamation, “Get behind me, Satan!” only makes sense within the framework of the second temptation (Matthew 16:23).
Jesus’ rebuke of Satan, warning that he should “not put the Lord your God to the test,” (Matthew 4:7) refers back to the Israelites exodus in the desert. The Israelites tested God at Massah by questioning God’s place in their lives; “Is the Lord among us, or not?” (Exodus 17:7). For Kierkegaard, God is the foundation of the self, and it is only in the last dimension of self-becoming, in accepting the self’s dependence on God, that one can truly be a self. Jesus’ warning against questioning God’s presence is central to the final temptation.
The Third Temptation: God or Mammon
“Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendor; and he said to him, ‘All these I will give you, if you will fall down and worship me,’” (Matthew 4:8-9). In the previous two temptations, Satan remains unidentified, and his motives for testing Jesus are unclear. However, in this final act of desperation, Satan’s identity and motives are completely transparent: “fall down and worship me.” At the great height of human despair, the devil is completely exposed. The temptation to abandon God is met with the greatest intensity.
With every increase in the degree of consciousness, and in proportion to that increase the intensity of despair increases: the more consciousness, the more intense the despair. This is everywhere to be seen, most clearly in the maximum and minimum of despair. The devil’s despair is the most intense despair, for the devil is sheer spirit, and therefore absolute consciousness and transparency; in the devil there is no obscurity which might serve as a mitigating excuse, his despair is therefore absolute defiance. This is the maximum of despair. (Perkins, 72).
Satan’s power, or rather his jurisdiction, is represented here by “the kingdoms of the world and their splendor.” One can imagine what Jesus saw on top of that mountain: the Han Dynasty in China, the great Mayan civilizations of Central America, the Iranian, Celtic, and Germanic Chiefdoms, and probably most striking of all, the Roman Empire. And yet, despite the power and spectacle of all these civilizations, none have survived. The devil’s power, while seemingly vast in the moment, is fleeting and ultimately short-sighted.
However, this reference to great earthly powers also foreshadows Christ’s eventual persecution and death on the cross at the hands of the Roman Empire. The notion of rejecting God for earthly powers is clearly present at Jesus’ trail before Pontius Pilate. When Jesus stood before the people and the chief priests, Pilate asked the crowd, “Shall I crucify your king?” The priests answered boldly, “we have no king but the emperor,” (John 19:15). The people in the crowd took Satan’s wager. Jesus, however, stands alone, ready to accept God as his ultimate king.
The self finds its true strength in “the power that established it” (Perkins, 50), in God the creator. Jesus overcomes the pinnacle of despair when he responds, “Away with you, Satan! for it is written, ‘Worship the Lord your God, and serve only him,’” (Matthew 4:10). And with that, the devil vanishes. Jesus recognizes that one can only be a self when one is completely united to God. Unlike the devil who is absolute defiance, Christ stands as a model for all humankind of absolute obedience to God.
A self directly before Christ is a self intensified by the inordinate concession from God, intensified by the inordinate accent that falls upon it because God allowed himself to be born, become man, suffer and die also for the sake of this self. As stated previously, the greater the conception of God, the more self; so it holds true here: the greater the conception of Christ the more self. Qualitatively a self is what its criterion is. That Christ is the criterion is the expression, attested by God, for the staggering reality that a self has, for only in Christ is it true that God is man’s goal and criterion, or the criterion and goal. (Perkins, 113-114)
To become transparent in God is to become nothing. One must empty one’s self before one can rest in the will and presence of that ontological power. Unaided self-relation is insufficient, for only the self in relation to God can purify man’s existence. Kierkegaard’s psychology of self-becoming is necessarily Christocentric. It asserts humankind is deficient until it rests wholly in the power of God. Having balanced the constituent parts of his self as synthesis, having overcome the temptation to be rid of oneself and remove painful awareness of despair, and having finally rejected any power but that which created the self, namely God, Jesus overcomes despair’s alluring grip and proves to be the true model for personal self-becoming.
Tyler Grudi
Works Cited
Glenn, John D. “The Definition of the Self and the Structure of Kierkegaard’s Work.” International Kierkegaard Commentary: The Sickness unto Death, vol. 19, pp. 5–21.
Holy Bible: NRSV, New Revised Standard Version. Harper Bibles, 2007.
Kierkegaard, Soren, et al. For Self-Examination. Princeton University Press, 1991.
Perkins, Robert L. Sickness unto Death. Mercer University Press, 2007.
Podmore, Simon D. Struggling with God Kierkegaard and the Temptation of Spiritual Trial. James Clark & Company, 2013.
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