On the Temptation of Christ

Detail of an image showing the Devil bearing Jesus 

found in an old French liturgical book (c. 1470-75) 

Collection: Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library 

(MS 425, fol. 48r) [1]

 

 

... the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, 

and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them ... 

                                                       - Matthew 4:8 (KJV)

 

 

I.

 

The biblical verses pertaining to the Temptation of Christ are among the most critically (and theologically) fascinating verses in the New Testament.

 

For these verses tell us something crucial about Jesus that any thoughtful and naturally questioning person who thinks the story of Christ through to the bitter end will ultimately have to acknowledge; namely, that Jesus was a kind of idiot [2] whose teachings were inadequate and displayed a fatal misunderstanding of the nature (and limits) of man.

 

For those who are unfamiliar with the verses and don't have the Good Book to hand, here's how they appear in Matthew 4:1-11 (KJV): 

 

 

1 Then was Jesus led up of the Spirit into the wilderness to be tempted of the devil. 

 

2 And when he had fasted forty days and forty nights, he was afterward an hungred. 

 

3 And when the tempter came to him, he said, If thou be the Son of God, command that these stones be made bread. 

 

4 But he answered and said, It is written, Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. 

 

5 Then the devil taketh him up into the holy city, and setteth him on a pinnacle of the temple, 

 

6 And saith unto him, If thou be the Son of God, cast thyself down: for it is written, He shall give his angels charge concerning thee: and in their hands they shall bear thee up, lest at any time thou dash thy foot against a stone. 

 

7 Jesus said unto him, It is written again, Thou shalt not tempt the Lord thy God. 

 

8 Again, the devil taketh him up into an exceeding high mountain, and sheweth him all the kingdoms of the world, and the glory of them; 

 

9 And saith unto him, All these things will I give thee, if thou wilt fall down and worship me. 

 

10 Then saith Jesus unto him, Get thee hence, Satan: for it is written, Thou shalt worship the Lord thy God, and him only shalt thou serve. 

 

11 Then the devil leaveth him, and, behold, angels came and ministered unto him.

 

 

II. 

 

It's this version of the narrative that we shall base our reading upon here, essentially arguing - in agreement with Dostoevsky and D. H. Lawrence - that man doesn't want freedom (or even salvation), but demands rather miracle, mystery, and a powerful authority to whom he can willingly submit.

 

Only a very rare few can find fulfilment without these things and establish lives of sovereign individuality. Jesus either couldn't or wouldn't see this and via his ideal teaching he makes "demands greater than the nature of man can bear" [3]. 

 

Thus, if you want to establish a Christian Church and State, you're going to have to turn to "that other great Spirit" [4] who loves man for what he is and not for what he ought to be: the Father of Lies and Prince of Darkness, Satan.      

 

 

III. 

 

The first temptation takes place in the Judean desert, where Jesus has been fasting for forty days and forty nights; a symbolic period of trial and spiritual endurance within biblical mythology, during which Christ demonstrated his total reliance on God. 

 

The devil encouraged Jesus to surrender to his hunger and prove his divinity by turning desert rocks into bread, but, being the religious fanatic that he was, Jesus simply mumbled something about man not living by bread alone. 

      

One can't help wishing he'd replied rather: I can resist everything except temptation [5] and conjured up a fabulous feast, inviting the Devil to join him - that would have been the wittier thing to say and also would have thrown the Devil on the back foot; Jesus would have turned the tables and upped the stakes via an act of what anthropologists term potlatch. 

 

But, of course, Jesus is completely humourless - he is not recorded laughing even once throughout the New Testament, let alone cracking a good joke or making a genuinely witty remark of the kind Wilde was famous for. 

 

So we get the now proverbial line about bread which Dostoevsky's Grand Inquisitor says was his first mistake: Feed men, and then ask of them virtue [6] - that's the formula if one wishes to produce loyal followers. And if that bread happens to be produced miraculously from stone, all the better; men who are both well-fed and given a magical display of power will be doubly loyal [7]. 

 

D. H. Lawrence develops this criticism of Jesus. Like the Inquisitor, he insists that man "demands bread: and not merely as foodstuff, but as a miracle, given from the hand of God [...] The earthly bread must in itself be the miracle, and be bound up with the miracle [...] The earthly bread is leavened with the heavenly bread" [8].  

 

IV.  

 

The second temptation of Christ unfolds when the devil takes Jesus to the highest point of the temple in Jerusalem and urges him to throw himself over the edge, quoting scripture (Psalm 91:11-12) in support of the idea that the angels of Heaven would catch him, were he truly the Son of God and not just some delusional carpenter. 

 

This was an attempt not only to force Jesus into making a dramatic display of his divine status, but to manipulate God also into taking action. Predictably, Jesus declined to jump and refused to put his Father to the test.

 

Again, for me at least, it would have been more interesting had he succumbed to temptation and accepted the challenge. Or indeed if he had said something along the lines of 'Let's find out if the demons of Hell are as prepared to catch you as the angels me', and thrown the Devil off the top of the temple.

 

Casting himself down from the temple to be caught by angels - or turning the tables on the devil by pushing him from the temple - would, much like the stone-into-bread trick, demonstrate his godhood in the minds of the people and they would abandon their old ways and follow him to heaven and back.

 

But then I'm not a Christian and I suppose what I'm suggesting is, much like the Grand Inquisitor's philosophy, Satanic in character. 

 

 

V. 

 

Finally, the devil offers Jesus authority and political power over all the magnificent kingdoms of the Earth - providing that Jesus abandons his mission, derails God's plan, and agrees to kneel before him. 

 

Taking charge in this manner would ensure universal salvation, the Grand Inquisitor claims. But Jesus isn't tempted and firmly commands the devil to fuck off - Get thee hence! - making it clear that he submits to and serves no one other than his Father.

 

Lawrence is convinced that Jesus should have accepted earthly power and the responsibility of such; that he was profoundly and disastrously mistaken in his one-sided insistence on the Love ideal and his perverse self-absorption. 

 

For while he succeeds in providing a model of practice for the ascetic individual, by refusing to think of men as social beings and showing no understanding of how power and politics operate, Jesus surrenders us all to the State and opens the way for those who have no qualms about exercising power in the most brutal manner: 

 

"Jesus made it inevitable, when he said that the money belonged to Caesar. It was a mistake. Money means bread, and the bread of men belongs to no man. Money also means power, and it is monstrous to give power to the virtual enemy." [9] 

      

In his late essay 'The Risen Lord' (1929), Lawrence famously dreams of a very different Jesus: no longer a man of sorrows, but a power-lord who agrees to come down off his mountain top so that he might rule. Here is a Jesus with tongues of fire round his brows, not a crown of thorns, willing and able to take the devil on at his own game and resist those mechanical forces belonging to Mammon [10].   

 

It's a Jesus that the Grand Inquisitor would absolutely approve of. 

 

I suspect that the early founders of what became known as Christianity [11] quickly understood that it's the principles put forward by Satan - a kind of politics of evil - that allows for the long-term survival and success of an institution. Nietzsche writes of how, "with every extension of Christianity", it became more and more necessary to vulgarise the teachings of Jesus and incorporate "the doctrines and rites of every subterranean cult" [12]. 

 

 

VI.       

 

In conclusion: the Grand Inquisitor is quite right to say that the Catholic Church does not need Jesus - and that if he were to return, as promised, it would only throw a spanner in the works and interfere with their mission which is to rule mankind in the name of God, but using the Devil's tricks and techniques (even those which bring death and destruction).   

 

And even if Jesus himself were to kiss me on the lips, I would not say otherwise. For Dostoevsky's tale is, as Lawrence says, depressingly true whether we like it or not, presenting the "final and unanswerable criticism of Christ [...] borne out by the long experience of humanity" [13].   

 

Notes

 

[1] Artists have produced many visual representations of the Temptation of Christ, but this is by far my favourite, showing as it does Jesus being quite literally carried up the mountain. The image makes me smile, because Jesus appears to be no more than a large doll or dummy via whom the devil might ventriloquise his own Satanic philosophy.    

  

[2] The term idiot is used here in a philosophical sense that draws upon Nietzsche's characterisation of Jesus in The Anti-Christ (§ 29) as an idealist detached from material reality and living in his own inner world. It is highly likely that Nietzsche borrowed the term from Dostoevsky who used it in his 1869 novel of the same name to describe someone (Prince Lev Myshkin) who is equally pure in spirit, but seen as naive and foolish by others.  

 

[3] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to The Grand Inquisitor, by F. M. Dostoevsky', Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 128.

 

[4] Ibid., p.129. 

 

[5] This profoundly anti-Christian line was written by Oscar Wilde in his play Lady Windermere's Fan (1892) and is spoken by Lord Darlington in Act 1. 

 

[6] 'The Grand Inquisitor' is a story contained within Fyodor Dostoevsky's philosophical novel The Brothers Karamazov (1880). The line quoted is found in Book V, Chapter 5.   

 

[7] The Roman poet Juvenal would famously sum this up with the phrase panem et circenses - a practice of appeasing the people that he condemns. See Satire X in Book 4 of his Satires (a collection of satirical verses written between 100 and 127 AD). Today, we might say cibus rapidus et TikTok.   

 

[8] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to The Grand Inquisitor, by F. M. Dostoevsky', Introductions and Reviews, pp. 128 and 132.  

 

[9] D. H. Lawrence, Apocalypse and the Writings on Revelation, ed. Mara Kalnins (Cambridge University Press, 1980), p. 146. 

 

[10] This essay can be found in Late Essays and Articles, ed. James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 2004), pp. 265-273.  

 

[11] As Nietzsche points out, the term Christianity is already a misunderstanding (and a corruption) of the glad tidings taught by Christ. See The Anti-Christ (§ 39), where he claims there has only ever been one Christian - and he died on the cross. What followed in his name was a reversal and negation of the values he had lived his life by.     

 

[12] Nietzsche, The Anti-Christ (§ 37), trans. R. J. Hollingdale (Penguin Books, 1968), p. 149. Nietzsche refers to this as Christianity's fall into morbid-barbarism, but we could just as easily use the phrase cynical-satanism.     

 

[13] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to The Grand Inquisitor, by F. M. Dostoevsky', Introductions and Reviews, p. 127. 

 

 

This is a sister post to (or variant of) an earlier (unexpected) text published on TTA discussing the Spanish Inquisition in relation to Dostoevsky's 'The Grand Inquisitor' (5 Aug 2026): click here. 

 

  

Nobody Expects a Post on the Spanish Inquisition! (Notes on Dostoevsky's The Grand Inquisitor)

 

The Spanish Inquisition Monty Python style: Cardinal Ximénez (Michael Palin), 

Cardinal Biggles (Terry Jones) and Cardinal Fang (Terry Gilliam)  

 

 

I. 

 

I have to admit that until very recently my knowledge of the Spanish Inquisition was largely shaped by a famous Monty Python sketch [1] which, when I was a child, I found frightening rather than funny: I think it was the red robes that scared me, although I was from a very early age highly sensitive to any display of religiosity and resistant to the idea of attending Sunday school.   

 

Having just read Dostoevsky's tale of the Grand Inquisitor, however - and having studied the history of the Spanish Inquisition in a little more detail - I now fully appreciate that it was no laughing matter for the thousands of people who were terrified, tortured, and killed and that I was right to childishly sense something sinister and malevolent about priests of every description.   

 

 

II.  

  

The Inquisition was originally established in 1231 by Pope Gregory IX, in an attempt to combat the spread of heresy; i.e., beliefs or opinions contrary to the established teachings of the Church. God may have given mankind free will, but make the wrong choice and you will be judged and punished accordingly. 

 

Inquisitors were allowed to investigate anyone, even on the slightest suspicion of wrongthink - regardless of whether there was or was not sufficient evidence to warrant an investigation - and those accused of heresy were not allowed to challenge their accusers. Cruel and ingenious methods of torture were often used in order to extract confessions of guilt.

 

The Spanish Inquisition, established by Pope Sixtus IV in 1478, was an early-modern revival of a medieval institution that had largely become irrelevant. D. H. Lawrence describes it as a "new fangled thing, peculiar to Spain, with her curious death-lust and her bullying; and, strictly, a Spanish-political instrument" [2] - i.e., both rabidly national in character and diabolic.  

 

Monarchs Ferdinand II and Isabella I were determined to maintain Spain as a devoutly Catholic country and the Inquisition operated more under royal control than papal authority, primarily targeting Jewish and Muslim converts to Christianity who were suspected of secretly practicing their former faiths [3], although it later gleefully targeted Protestants as a new type of heretic [4]. 

 

Under the first Inquisitor Generalis, Tomás de Torquemada, prosecutions rapidly expanded throughout Spain and the areas it controlled and more than 2,000 accused individuals were burnt at the stake as an auto da fé. The name Torquemada is now rightly associated with religious intolerance and fanaticism [5]. 

 

All in all, it has been estimated that 150,000 people were prosecuted by the Inquisition and of these, perhaps as many as 5,000 were executed. Others were either flogged in public, enslaved on ships, forced into exile, or imprisoned (sometimes for life). Any properties belonging to these poor souls were, of course, confiscated by the State (nudge, nudge, wink, wink - say no more).  

 

 

III. 

 

While history records the bureaucratic greed and physical cruelty of the real inquisitors, it took a novelist to lay bare the disturbing, inverted logic driving the institution's zeal. 

 

In Dostoevsky's 'The Grand Inquisitor' [6], Jesus himself has finally returned and is brought before the Inquisition in Seville, where the Grand Inquisitor defends the following crucial argument: only by adopting the principles of the Devil - not the Gospels - can the Catholic Church bring about mankind's unification. 

 

Thus, the Church no longer has any need for Jesus: We are not with Thee, but with him, and that is our secret! 

 

The Grand Inquisitor also informs Jesus he was fundamentally mistaken - that he should have given in to temptation - which, you have to admit, is a terrifically provocative and amusing idea and one which D. H. Lawrence not only picks up on, but ultimately endorses.   

 

 

IV.

 

In his younger days, when he first read Dostoevsky's story of the Grand Inquisitor, Lawrence was not impressed. It seemed to him rubbish: "just a piece of showing-off: a display of cynical-satanical pose which was simply irritating" [7].

 

But by the end of his life, Lawrence is able to admit that its central argument is depressingly true and it makes his heart sink: "I still see a trifle of cynical-satanical showing-off. But under that, I hear the final and unanswerable criticism of Christ [...] borne out by the long experience of humanity" [8]. 

 

Any thoughtful and naturally questioning person who thinks the story of Christ (and what becomes known as Christianity) through to the bitter end will, according to Lawrence, come to the same conclusion: Jesus was a kind of идиот whose teachings were inadequate and a fatal misunderstanding of the nature (and limits) of man. 

 

Ultimately, man doesn't want freedom (or even salvation), he demands rather miracle, mystery, and an authority to whom he must submit. Only a very rare few can live without these things and enjoy individual sovereignty. Jesus either couldn't or wouldn't see this and via his ideal teaching he makes "demands greater than the nature of man can bear" [9]. 

 

Thus, if you want to establish a Christian Church and State, you're going to have to turn to "that other great Spirit" [10] who loves man for what he is and not for what he ought to be: Satan. Dostoevsky is a marvellous visionary, but he is also a thinker of evil (which is at last merely a term for vivid life) and his diagnosis of human nature "is simple and unanswerable" [11]. 

 

What this means, then, is that Jesus should have been a little more Wildean and given in to temptation. Lawrence writes: "Jesus refused the three offers out of pride and fear: he wanted to be greater than these, and 'above' them. But we now realise that no man, not even Jesus, is really 'above' miracle, mystery, and authority." [12] 

 

And Jesus cannot be above money either: it cannot simply be rendered unto Caesar or left to the Devil: 

 

"Money is not life, it is true. But ignoring money and leaving it to the devil means handing over the great mass of men to the devil: for the mass of men cannot distinguish between money and life. It is hard to believe: certainly Jesus didn't believe it: and yet, as Dostoevsky and the Inquisitor point out, it is so." [13] 

 

So, where does this all leave us: must we too side with the Devil? 

 

Readers can decide that for themselves, but Lawrence suggests it may be possible to borrow certain things from the Devil without actually serving him or selling our souls. 

 

However, I'm a bit sceptical about that, although, unlike Lawrence, I don't worry about being seen as - what was the phrase he used to condemn Dostoevsky - cynical satanic and, push comes to shove, I'm sympathetic with the Devil and would always side with the anti-Christ, whatever the cost of so doing [14].   

 

 

 

A 1948 edition featuring wood engravings 

by Fritz Eichenberg  

 

  

Notes

 

[1] Written by Michael Palin and Terry Jones, this satirical (and unexpected) reimagining of the Spanish Inquisition became a running gag in the classic British sketch show Monty Python's Flying Circus. It first featured in the second episode of series two, broadcast on BBC1 on 22 September 1970. The catchphrase - 'Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!' - is now ingrained in the cultural imagination and lives on as an internet meme. 

      For those who wish to view the first sketch, please click here. I still don't find it funny, but no longer find it frightening either. 

 

[2] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to The Grand Inquisitor, by F. M. Dostoevsky', Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen (Cambridge University Press, 2005), p. 131.

 

[3] The regulation of faith intensified following royal decrees issued in 1492 and 1502 ordering Jews and Muslims to either convert to Catholicism, go into exile, or face death. Hundreds of thousands of forced conversions, mass expulsions, and executions all resulted.

 

[4] The Inquisition wasn't only interested in identifying what we might think of as common or garden heretics; witches, sodomites, and Freemasons were also targeted. 

 

[5] Torquemada died in 1498 and was interred in the monastery to which he had semi-retired. His tomb was ransacked in 1832 - just two years before the Spanish Inquisition was finally disbanded - and his remains were allegedly stolen and ritually incinerated.

 

[6] 'The Grand Inquisitor' is a story contained within Fyodor Dostoevsky's philosophical novel The Brothers Karamazov (1880). It was first translated into English by Constance Garnett in 1912 (published by Heinemann).

 

[7] D. H. Lawrence, 'Introduction to The Grand Inquisitor, by F. M. Dostoevsky', Introductions and Reviews, p. 127. 

 

[8] Ibid. 

 

[9] Ibid., p. 128. 

 

[10] Ibid. p. 129. 

 

[11] Ibid. 

 

[12] Ibid., p. 130. 

 

[13] Ibid. For a sister post to this one on the tempation of Christ and Dostoevsky's 'The Grand Inquisitor', please click here.  

 

[14] Funnily enough, in a letter to Else Jaffe written in June 1929, Lawrence concedes to his sister-in-law that she is right, in a sense, to see him as siding with the anti-Christ, and a touch Satanisch (although he is not anti-life): "I am all for Lucifer, who is really the Morning Star." 

      See The Letters of D. H. Lawrence, ed. Keith Sagar and James T. Boulton (Cambridge University Press, 1993), pp. 331-332. 

 

 

For a sister post to this one on the tempation of Christ and Dostoevsky's 'The Grand Inquisitor', please click here.

 

 

The Butterfly Revelation: Notes on D. H. Lawrence and V. V. Rozanov

Vasily Rozanov by Ivan Parkhomenko (1909)

I.

Vasily Rozanov was a controversial Russian writer and philosopher of the pre-Revolutionary period who tried to reconcile a revised form of Christianity with his own phallic eroticism. It's perhaps not surprising, therefore, that he should attract the interest of D. H. Lawrence, even if the latter is ambiguous about the sometimes astonishing writings of the former.

Thus, in his review of Solitaria, for example, whilst he concedes there are some "occasionally profound and striking" ideas, Lawrence can't help dismissing Rozanov as yet another morbidly introspective Russian who, like Dostoevsky, wallows in adoration of Jesus on the one hand, whilst remaining absorbedly concerned with his own dirty linen on the other:

"The contradictions in them are not so very mysterious, or edifying after all. They have a spurting, gamin hatred of civilisation, of Europe, of Christianity, of governments, and of everthing else, in their moments of energy; and in their inevitable relapses into weakness, they make the inevitable recantation, they whine, they humiliate themselves [...] and call it Christlike, and then with the left hand commit some dirty little crime or meannness, and call it the mysterious complexity of the human soul." [315]

Such half-baked nihilism is masturbatory and quickly becomes tiresome. As does Rozanov's fragmentary writing style, of which I remain a passionate exponent, regardless of Lawrence's criticism. That his work appears formless and seems to lack system, isn't a problem for me; nor is the often paradoxical character of the text. And the fact that Lawrence describes Rozanov as a "Mary Mary quite contrary" only makes me smile.


II.

Whilst Lawrence finds Solitaria boring (despite the fact that Rozanov occasionally "hits the nail on the head and makes it jump") and Fallen Leaves sad and self-conscious (despite its sincerity), there is a work - having read a short extract - about which he's far more positive: Apocalypse of Our Times ...

"The Apocalypse must be a far more imporant book than Solitaria, and we wish to heaven we had been given it instead. Now at last we see Rozanov as a real thinker [...]"

Lawrence continues:

"The book is an attack on Christianity, and as far as we are given to see, there is no canting or recanting in it. It is passionate, and suddenly valid. It is not jibing or criticism or pulling to pieces. It is a real passion. Rozanov has more or less recovered the genuine pagan vision, the phallic vision, and with these eyes he looks, in amazement and consternation, on the mess of Christianity.
      For the first time, we get what we have got from no Russian, neither Tolstoy nor Dostoevsky nor any of them, a real, positive view on life. It is as if the pagan Russian had wakened up in Rozanov [...] and was just staggering at what he saw. His background is [...] the vast old pagan background, the phallic. And in front of this, the tortured complexity of Christian civilisation [...] is a kind of phantasmagoria to him.
      He is the first Russian, as far as I am concerned, who has ever said anything to me. And his vision is full of passion, vivid, valid. He is the first to see that immortality is in the vividness of life, not in the loss of life. The butterfly becomes a whole revelation to him: and to us." [317]

How much of this is true and how much it's Lawrence projecting his own vision of phallic wholeness onto Rozanov, I don't know. But I do like the idea of a butterfly providing a revelation to us. Ultimately, I would suggest that we have more to learn by studying insects than in listening to the words of dead prophets.   

Notes

D. H. Lawrence, 'Review of Solitaria, by V. V. Rozanov', and 'Review of Fallen Leaves, by V. V. Rozanov', Introductions and Reviews, ed. N. H. Reeve and John Worthen, (Cambridge University Press, 2005), pp. 313-319 and 345-351.

V. V. Rozanov, Solitaria, trans. by S. S. Koteliansky, (Wishart, 1927). First published in Russian in 1911. This edition includes, amongst other extras, a 20-page extract trans. by Koteliansky from Apocalypse of Our Times (first published in Russian in 1918).

V. V. Rozanov, Fallen Leaves, trans. S. S. Koteliansky, (Mandrake Press, 1929). First published in Russian, in two volumes, in 1913 and 1915.

For those who are interested in reading more on Lawrence and Rozanov, see the following essays:

Heinrich A. Stammler, 'Apocalypse: V. V. Rozanov and D. H. Lawrence', Canadian Slavonic Papers / Revue Canadienne des Slavistes, Vol. 16, No. 2 (Taylor and Francis, Ltd., Summer, 1974), pp. 221-244. 

George J. Zytaruk, 'The Phallic Vision: D. H. Lawrence and V. V. Rozanov', Comparative Literature Studies, Vol. 4, No. 3 (Penn State University, 1967), pp. 283-297.