The Temptation was for the Tempter

In the wilderness, Satan failed to reveal God’s gracious love to be a lie.

Once the Lord crushes the satan underfoot will Lucifer remain?

Lent begins this Sunday with Luke’s account of Christ’s trial in the wilderness.

The contemporary western church tends, in the case of the mainline, to psychologize the biblical character of Satan into oblivion. Evangelicals meanwhile appear to harbor such crippling anxiety about the specter of heresy they avoid entertaining the questions the church fathers felt freed by the gospel to ask. Among these questions, the question of the ultimate fate of Satan and the fallen spirits. The closure of the question, however, shuts down hopeful possibilities for reading the scriptures.

Positing the ultimate salvation even of Satan and his minions, the 20th century Orthodox theologian Sergei Bulgakov reads the Gospels’s account of Christ’s temptation in the wilderness in light of the love of the Triune God. The temptations, Bulgakov ventures, were for tempter, who no longer believed the LORD is this faithful Son, his merciful Father, together in their Spirit.