Temptation of Jesus: In the Temple

Considering the temptation where the devil attempts to lure Jesus into stepping off the temple roof because the angels will "guard you in all your ways...", Benedict takes us into an unexpected direction. Certainly everyone has reflected upon the devil's excellent knowledge of scripture and his ability to pull it from context and twist it for his own uses. The Pope considers this specifically in terms of this temptation and, once again, surprised me.

I could quote the whole darned book for you but will try to feel satisfied with sharing this couple of excerpts for the moment.

First, about scripture:

... The devil proves to be a Bible expert who can quote the Psalm exactly. The whole conversation of the second temptation takes the form of a dispute between two Bible scholars. Remarking on this passage, Joachim Gnilka says that the devil presents himself here as a theologian. The Russian writer Vladimir Soloviev took up this motif in his short story "The Antichrist." The Antichrist receives an honorary doctorate in theology from the University of Tubingen and is a great Scripture scholar. Soloviev's portray of the Antichrist forcefully expresses his skepticism regarding a certain type of scholarly exegesis current at the time. This is not a rejection of scholarly biblical interpretation as such, but an eminently salutary and necessary warning against its possible aberrations. The fact is that scriptural exegesis can become a tool of the Antichrist. Soloviev is not the first person to tell us that; it is the deeper point of the temptation story itself. The alleged findings of scholarly exegesis have been used to put together the most dreadful books that destroy the figure of Jesus and dismantle the faith. ...

The theological debate between Jesus and the devil is a dispute over the correct interpretation of Scripture, and it is relevant to every period of history. The hermeneutical question lying at the basis of proper scriptural exegesis is this: What picture of God are we working with? The dispute about interpretation is ultimately a dispute about who God is. Yet in practice, the struggle over the image of God, which underlies the debate about valid biblical interpretation, is decided by the picture we form of Christ: Is he, who remained without worldly power, really the Son of God?

Secondly, he returns to the question which Jesus answers when he says, "You shall not put the Lord your God to the test." I basically knew the reason for that, as does any faithful believer, but look at how eloquently and elegantly Benedict says it.

We are dealing here with the vast question as to how we can and cannot know God, how we are related to God and how we can lose him. The arrogance that would make God an object and impose our laboratory conditions upon him is incapable of finding him. The arrogance that would make God an object and impose our laboratory conditions upon him is incapable offending him. For it already implies that we deny God as God by placing ourselves above him, by discarding the whole dimension of love, of interior listening; by no longer acknowledging as real anything but what we can experimentally test and grasp. To think like that is to make oneself God. And to do that is to abase not only God, but the world and oneself too.

Jesus of Nazareth by Joseph Ratzinger (a.k.a. Pope Benedict XVI)

Completely off-topic:

I have been to Tubingen. It is a delightful university town and you will find darned few American tourists there. Or, I should say, at least you did when we went. It had the nearest castle to where my brother was living at the time so we went to see it. After Pope Benedict was elected we were all delighted to think of him teaching there and wandering in the same streets that we had for that summer day that I remember so fondly.