Peirasmós (πειρασμός), Part I: Synthesis of the first six petitions as God’s eternal Kingdom breaking into This Age (1-3), in Christ (4th) through the sacrifice of love (5th), leading…to…a clash (6th)

[Reading time, Summary Synthesis: 8 minutes;

Dostoevsky, Brothers Karamazov: 8 minutes]

Summary of the opening four petitions of the Lord’s Prayer

In the first three writings on the fourth petition of the epioúsios bread, in which we contended, together with many of the Church Fathers, that the meaning of this highly-debated phrase is not so much us asking for the material, biological sustenance of “daily bread” that keeps our bodies momentarily alive in this age [and which, we might add, Jesus in the verses that follow specifically tells us not to ask for (Mt 6:25, 31-33)], but rather it is the eternal bread of Deuteronomy 8 and John 6, which is the the “Word of God” that activates in us now the life of the coming Kingdom. And this “living bread”, which is none other than Christ Himself, becomes the integrating center of the prayer that unites the opening petitions calling for God’s name to be hallowed, His Kingdom to come and His will to be done with all that follows.

We ask, then, for these realities to become operationalized now— today—“Give us this very day” (δὸς ἡμῖν σήμερον) all that is required for these eternal realities “in heaven” to become present here and now “on earth” (ὡς ἐν οὐρανῷ καὶ ἐπὶ γῆς). And when we do so, we are asking that all things “that are in heaven and that are on earth” which have been created in Christ (Col 1:16), now become reconciled in Him (Col 1:20), such that the life of God’s eternal Kingdom fill and reshape the present moment (Mt 13:33; Lk 17:21).

Yet we must ask,

How is this possible?

How can this actually happen?

In the words of Dietrich Bonhoeffer in the opening chapter of Life Together, it can occur only “through and in Christ”—For it is He alone Who is the only One able to unite us “on earth” to God “in heaven” so that our lives here and now begin to resemble the life of God’s eternal Kingdom. And it should be mentioned here that in Syriac versions of the Lord’s Prayer, the epioúsios bread was often translated as the “future bread” or the “bread of tomorrow” or the “bread of the future age” that comes to us here and now only through Jesus. And carrying this interpretation forward, the early liturgies of the Church further frame the witness of our partaking of the Lord’s Supper “as the sacrament of the Kingdom…its end and fulfillment.” As we partake of this bread “today”, it inaugurates in us the life of the Kingdom to come, renewing us into the new creational community that is realized moment-by-moment through and in Christ.

The fifth petition: forgiveness, love and recreation

Yet, we again ask,

How is this possible?

Even more precisely,

How does this renewal begin its operation in us here and now?

One word only—forgiveness:

“Forgive us this day our debts as we forgive our debtors.”

Though this will be the content of future posts, can we not say up front that it is thoroughly instructive that our “spirituality” almost summarily fails when it is actually tested within the realities of family or community life? As such, for the Kingdom to become operationalized in any truly Gospel way in our current reality, there must be forgiveness—we might even say—continual forgiveness. For it is only such forgiveness that can form an unbreakable bond of unity within the new creational community, displaying the eternal Love of the Triune God both to one other and to an Age trapped in darkness and deceit (Jn 17:21).

Such a reality, however, cannot or will not come into being without our vital union with Christ—the only One Who can bring down the life of of God’s eternal Kingdom into our present world in ways that renew it…and recreate it. But, as Jesus Himself makes clear, this will lead us ultimately into a great conflict:

“The Kingdom of God suffers violence and the violent take it by force.”

As we enter into this Kingdom, our Christian life will/must/has to be tested (peirázō) so as to reveal its ultimate foundations (I Cor 3:10-15). This testing (peirasmós) will be focus of the following writings.

Before moving into a summary of this sixth petition, we first draw from the rich wisdom of the Desert.

A word from Dostoevsky’s Father Zosimas

Each of these conceptual dimensions within the Lord’s Prayer is summarized in quite an extraordinary fashion in the account given by Father Zosimas in the early portions of The Brothers Karamazov…of which Dostoevsky himself stated during its writing,

“I'd die happy if I could finish this final novel, for I would have expressed myself completely.”

Speaking of the final days of his brother in the throws of what would be his terminal illness, Zosimas offers us a glimpse of how suffering, and even death can open us up to nothing short of “paradise.” This can occur, we find, if—and only if—such suffering is borne with the forgiving and renewing grace of Christ’s eternal Love:

Don’t be afraid of anything, ever. And do not grieve. As long as your repentance does not weaken, God will forgive everything.

There is not—there cannot be—a sin on earth that God will not forgive the truly repentant. Why, a man cannot commit a sin so great as to exhaust the infinite love of God. How could there be a sin that would surpass the love of God?

Think only of repentance, all the time, and drive away all fear. Have faith that God loves you more than you can ever imagine. He loves you, sinful as you are and, indeed, because of your sin.

It was said long ago that there is more joy in heaven over one repentant sinner than over ten righteous men. Go now, and fear nothing…For if you repent, you love, and if you love, you are with God. Love redeems and saves everything. If I, a sinner like yourself, am moved and feel compassion for you, how infinitely much more will God!

Love is such an infinite treasure; it can buy the whole world and can redeem not only your sins, but the sins of all people. So go and fear no more.

Zosimas goes onto to recount the final days of his dying brother which, we discover, was the very thing that drew him out of the vanity of This Age to life in Christ. He begins,

The days were starting to be bright, serene and fragrant--it was a late Easter. All night he would cough, I recall; he slept badly, and in the mornings would always get dressed and try to sit in a soft armchair. That is how I shall remember him: sitting there quietly,
meekly, smiling, in reality ill, but with a countenance of cheerfulness and joy.

He had undergone a complete spiritual alteration--such a wondrous change had suddenly begun within him!

Our old nurse would enter his room:

'Let me light the lamp before your icon, dearie,' she would say.

And previously he had not allowed it, would even blow it out.

'Light it, dear nurse, light it, I was a cruel monster to forbid you earlier. As you light the lamp you say your prayers, and I, in rejoicing for your sake, say mine also. That means we pray to the same God.'

Strange did those words seem to us, and mother would go away to her room and weep and weep, though when she came in again to him she would wipe her eyes and assume an air of cheerfulness.

‘Dear mother, don't cry, my darling,' he used to say. 'I have much time to live yet, I shall make merry with you both, and my life, my life will be joyful and merry!' '

‘Oh, dear boy, what kind of merriment can there be for you, when all night you burn in a fever and cough till your chest nearly bursts apart?'

Mamma,' he replied to her, ‘do not weep, life is paradise, and we are all in paradise, but we don't want to realize it, and if we did care to realize it, paradise would be established in all the world tomorrow.'

And we all wondered at his words, so strangely and so resolutely did he say this; we felt tender emotion and we wept. Friends would come to visit us:

‘My beloved, my dear ones,' he would say, 'what have I done to deserve your love, why do you love such a one as me, and why did I not know it and value it earlier?'

To the servants who came in he would say every moment:

‘My beloved, my dear ones, why do you serve me, am I worthy of it? If God would have mercy on me and let me stay among the living, I would serve you, for all must serve one another.'

Kind mother, when she heard this, shook her head:

‘My dear one, it's your illness that's making you talk like this.'

‘Mamma, joy of my life,' he said, 'it's impossible that there be no masters and no servants, but let me be the servant of my servants, and let me be to them what they are to me. And I say to you also, dear mother, that each of us is guilty before the other for everything, and I more than any.'

Dear mother smiled wryly at this, she wept and smiled, saying:

‘But why are you more guilty before all than anyone else? What about the murderers and brigands? What offenses have you committed, that you should blame yourself more than anyone else?' '

‘Dear mother, droplet of my blood,' he said (at the time he had begun to use endearments of this kind, unexpected ones), 'beloved droplet of my blood, joyful one, you must learn that of a truth each of us is guilty before all for everyone and everything. I do not know how to explain this to you, but I feel that it is so, to the point of torment. And how could we have lived all this time being angry with one another and knowing nothing of this?'

Thus did he arise from slumber, each day growing more and more full of tender piety and joy, and trembling all over with love. The doctor used to come—old Eisenschmidt, the German, on his rounds:

‘Well, doctor, will I live another day upon the earth?' he would ask—he used to like to play the clown with him.

‘Not only will you live another day, you will live many days yet,' the doctor used to reply to him. 'You will live for months and even years.' '

‘Oh, what use are months and years!' he would exclaim.

‘Why count the days, when one is enough for a man to know all happiness?

My dear ones, why do we quarrel, boast in front of one another, remember wrongs against one another? We should go straight into the garden and make merry and romp, love and praise and kiss one another, and bless our lives.'

‘He is not long for the world, your son,' the doctor told dear mother as she was seeing him off from the porch. ‘He is lapsing from illness into madness.'

The windows of his room overlooked the garden, and our garden was a shady one, with old trees on which the springtime buds were forming, and where the early birds came to rest, twittering and singing through his windows. And suddenly, as he looked at them, lost in wonder at them, he began to ask them for forgiveness:

‘Birds of God, birds of joy, you must forgive me too, for against you too I have sinned.' No one was able to understand this at the time, but he wept with joy:

‘Yes,' he said, ‘all around me there has been such divine glory: birds, trees, meadows, sky, and I alone have lived in disgrace. I alone have dishonored it all, completely ignoring its beauty and glory.'

‘You take too many sins upon yourself,' dear mother would say, weeping.

‘But dear mother, joy of my life, I am crying for joy, and not from grief;

Why, I myself want to be guilty before them, only I cannot explain it to you, for I do not know how to love them. Let me be culpable before all, and then all will forgive me, and that will be paradise. Am I not in paradise now?"

The penultimate petition—“Lead us not into testing” (πειρασμός)

This summary now leads us to the penultimate petition of the Lord’s Prayer, which will be the focus of the next four writings. Below will offer an introductory synthesis to the sixth petition. The next will focus on its uses in the Gospels, where it more readily expresses the realities of “testing” or “trial” rather than “temptation.” The third will seek to frame its meaning within its OT counterpart in the LXX: nasah (נָסָה), as well the closely related words, tsaraph (צָרַף) and bakhan (בָּחַן). Part IV will trace the development of peirasmós from Acts to Hebrews and the final writing will examine its development from the Epistle of James through to Revelation.

We end this writing with an introductory synthesis of the sixth petition,

“Lead us not into temptation.”

Summary Synthesis

As this new creational reality of God’s eternal kingdom comes into the present age (the opening three petitions), being enacted in Christ (fourth petition) through forgiveness and love (fifth petition), there is a clash, in Jesus’ words, with “the power of darkness” (ἡ ἐξουσία τοῦ σκότους, Lk 22:53), “the ruler of this world” (ὁ ἄρχων τοῦ κόσμου τούτου, Jn 12:31; 16:11) and in Paul’s language, “the god of this age” (ὁ θεὸς τοῦ αἰῶνος τούτου, II Cor 4:4).

Our ensuing, violent struggle with these ever present realities (biázetai: Mt 11:12. Lk 16:16) must climax into a death to all that this darkness/age/world has to offer us (Jn 12:24). And this is what will constitutes for us the testing, the trial, the peirasmós…which we can only endure if we “remain” with Jesus in His peirasmois (δδιαμεμενηκότες μετ’ ἐμοῦ ἐν τοῖς πειρασμοῖς μου, Lk 22:28…Rev 3:10—The final occurrence in the NT).

If we seek to do so alone in our own strength (I Cor 13:1-3) we will fail, just as the disciples in the Garden (Mt 26:56b; Mk 14:50…Jn 15:4-6), who entered into their peirasmós without watchfulness and prayer (γρηγορεῖτε καὶ προσεύχεσθε, ἵνα μὴ εἰσέλθητε εἰς πειρασμόν, Mt 26:41; Lk 22:40, 46).

It is, therefore, our union with Jesus (Rom 6:2-8) that makes this endurance of watchfulness possible in our own particular testing. For it is Christ alone Who is the only human person to have endured the ultimate test—the only One Who was able to bear under (hypó + ménō) all the force of satanic testing (pânta peirasmón, Lk 4:13), the only One Who literally could take it all into Himself and conquer it (I Pet 2:24); and thus, the only One Who can release to us the Holy Spirit, Who operationalizes this work in us (Jn 7:39…14:15-23…15:4-7…26-27…16:5-15…17:21-25).

For the Spirit brings Christ’s Life to bear in our own experiences (i.e. that which is produced “out of” [ex] the “peirasmós,” Col 1:21-27), in exactly the ways necessary to recreate our fallen human nature (II Cor 5:14-21) such that we can then endure together with Him. And thus, in union with Jesus, we find that something incredible happens:

Now, the intensity of testing, the hardship of trial, the horrors of affliction (thlîpsis), are no longer the things that we fear and desperately seek to avoid.

Rather, these are precisely the means by which the Spirit can work deep into our being (katergázomai) the realities of Christ-like endurance (hypomonḗ), forming our character through these trials (dokimḗ) into one marked by hope and vivified by the eternal “love” which He “sheds abroad in our hearts” (Rom 5:3-5).