I
A. C. Deane: "Not into temptation." ... Concerning these words much has been written, for the sentence in which they stand has ever been accounted the most difficult of the Lord's Prayer. But the point of difficulty has shifted within modern times, so that of the newer problem there seems to be still something which needs to be said. True, neither the child at a mother's knee nor the aged cottager repeating the Prayer will stray far from the essential meaning. Each, at least, knows temptation; each asks to be delivered from evil. Rightly, however, we desire more than a general idea of the significance which the sentence possesses. The more closely we examine the Paternoster, the more spiritually vital it becomes; the more our eyes are opened to the wealth of teaching beneath the simplicity of phrase. And it is, I believe, by a close scrutiny of the exact wording that we may hope to solve the problems and arrive at the true force of this final petition in the Lord's Prayer. Of the older and more familiar difficulty little, perhaps, need be said now, but it seems to have been felt keenly in the earlier days of the Christian Church. "Are we to believe," men asked, "that God leads us into temptation If so,
O Thou, who didst with pitfall and with gin
Beset the Road I was to wander in,
Thou wilt not with Predestin'd Evil round
Enmesh, and then impute my Fall to Sin!"
We shrink from such a thought - yet how else is it needful, as Jesus teaches, to beseech the Father that he will not lead us into temptation? From very early times some people had tried to excuse their misdeeds by assigning the blame to God, and the son of Sirach reproved them: "Say not thou: It is through the Lord that I fell away. . . . Say not thou: It is He that caused me to err." Afterwards St. James repeated the warning, in his own blunt fashion "Let no man say when he is tempted I am tempted of God." Was he driven to enforce this because already the sentence of the Paternoster had been misunderstood, and mischievous arguments based on the misunderstanding? In later years we may be sure that the difficulty was increased by the rendering of the Greek phrase by "ne nos inducas" in Latin, and, from the Latin, by "Lead us not" in English. Those words would be the right equivalent of another Greek verb than that which is used; in the one actually employed there is no such strong directive sense. The Revised Version has recognized this by putting " Bring us not" in place of "Lead us not," and we might wish that "Bring us not" were adopted in our liturgical use of the Prayer. Yet that change, though it would lessen, would not remove the difficulty - the difficulty of supposing the words to imply that God, unless our prayers intervened, might bring man into temptation.
The way to the right understanding of them seems to be shown by some variants of the sentence - Dr. Chase has shown that they were both very ancient and very widespread. Indeed, these "glosses " often passed from liturgical versions of the Prayer, where, in all probability, they originated, into actual texts of the Matthean and Lucan Gospels. The most felicitous, perhaps, is that quoted by St. Augustine: "Many people when using the Prayer word this sentence 'Suffer us not to be led into temptation.'" (Multiprecando ita dicunt: Ne nos patiaris induci in tentationem.) This turn of the sentence, given it in very early times, persisted through centuries, and passed, indeed, into our own tongue. As I write, I have before me a copy, printed in 1542, of "A Necessary Doctrine and Erudition for any Christian man, set furthe by the Kynges majestie of Englande." We may suppose Cranmer, rather than Henry VIII, to have been its actual author. Among its contents is an exposition of the Paternoster. First the Prayer is printed in full, and then each of its clauses, with explanations. All the other sentences stand exactly as we know and use them, but this follows the variations mentioned by St. Augustine, and - alike in the text of the Prayer and commentary - is worded: "And let us not be ledde into temptation."
Mere gloss though it be, we can hardly doubt that this expansion of the original sentence reveals its true meaning. Naturally enough, the Greek sentence - probably like the Aramaic it translated - was phrased as concisely as possible, that it might be memorized the more easily. And, for the same reason, a parallelism of form would be preserved between it and the petitions which preceded it. Thus "bring us not into temptation" is a condensed sentence, so to speak; is an example of what the grammarians call "brachyology." But the spirit of the petition it makes is "Suffer [Permit] us not to be brought into temptation." When thus understood and used, the older difficulty associated with it disappears.
II
But another, and a far more serious, difficulty survives for the thoughtful disciple of modern days. Recognizing that the words contain no suggestion that we might be "tempted of God," discerning "suffer us not to be brought into temptation" as their true meaning, he is driven yet to ask why we are taught to make this prayer. It seems to ask the impossible. We are sure that Jesus never bade his disciples to offer petitions which, from their very nature, could never be fulfilled. Yet such a petition would be one asking that we might escape temptation. Not the greatest saint that ever lived could be exempt from it. Nor for our Lord Himself in His earthly life was this possible. And we are not to suppose that His only temptations were those He faced in solitude immediately after the Baptism. There were others which beset Him throughout His ministry, and some at least - perhaps the temptation to abandon His work in the face of hostility and seeming failure - He bore in common with His disciples. "Ye are they," He said to them near the end, "which have continued with Me in My temptations" (Luke 22:28). How, then, can we ask to be spared that which is, in fact, inevitable? Why should we seem to ask for escape from the common lot of human nature? What do we really mean when we say, Lead us not into temptation"?
A commentator of the older school cites the words as an example of our Lord's "idealism." We are told that "as He commanded His disciples to be perfect, though knowing well that perfection far exceeded their reach, so here He bids them pray for the ideal state, for freedom from all temptation, although in this world the prayer cannot be completely answered." The reader will agree, I think, that this is a most unsatisfying explanation. It is one thing to propound an ideal standard of human conduct; it is quite another to implore God daily to grant what, in point of fact, we know He cannot grant. Moreover - and here we touch the heart of the difficulty - "freedom from temptation" would not be "the ideal state" for human beings in this world. To desire it would be, speaking bluntly, the height of foolishness, would be to ignore all that God has revealed concerning moral growth.
For we have learnt no longer to confuse temptation with sin. We see that the potential good of temptation is as real as its potential evil. We understand how fundamental is the law of effort as the condition of all progress. Science has taught us to discern its operation in the physical world, and to see struggle crowned by survival in the cosmic evolutionary process. And in the spiritual world also it is he who overcometh that inheriteth. To meet and to master temptation seems to be the one means of strengthening character, so that did we not meet temptation we could make no moral progress. Even for our Lord Himself, being Man, the rule held. It could be only His conquest over temptation which caused Him, in St. Luke's bold phrase, "to grow in favour with God." And, though temptation was of the devil, it was by the Spirit that He was led to meet it. In short, so far as we can understand, if human nature were debarred from meeting temptation, it would be debarred also from the possibility of moral growth. St. James may have had this truth in mind when he wrote a sentence which our English Bible - both Authorized and Revised Versions - gravely mistranslates. Whatever its exact force, St. James did not mean to say, "Count it all joy when ye fall into divers temptations." What he did say was (literally) that Christians should be glad "when ye fall [i.e. from tranquil well-being] so as to be compassed about by manifold trials." The "trials" of this sentence, however, may be external rather than internal; "afflictions," "persecutions," rather than moral temptations.
Here, however, our concern is with the words "Bring us not" - or "Suffer us not to be brought" - "into temptation." To pray that we may escape meeting temptation, so far from being a petition in keeping with the rest of the Lord's Prayer, would be both futile and foolish. It would be futile, because, this could not be granted; it would be foolish, for if it were granted it would be to our hurt. How, then, are we to interpret, in what sense are we to use, this sentence of the Paternoster? The answers supplied by commentaries are various, yet alike in being forced, elaborate, and therefore unsatisfying. Often an attempt is made to distinguish between "normal" temptations and "extra and avoidable" temptations, and to argue that this petition is restricted to the latter. Thus, in his volume on the Sermon on the Mount, Dr. Edward Lyttelton paraphrases the sentence: "May it not become necessary that we be roused from spiritual sloth by being brought into special temptation and so falling into sin." That is an explanation which rather needs explanation. It seems to imply that the Divine way of remedying our spiritual sloth is to cause us to fall into sin. But, apart from any such special point, this is one of the many explanations which are far too subtle and intricate. They seem to forget that the Prayer was given originally for use by the simple peasant and fisher folk of Galilee. Surely it is incredible that, among the very concise, lucid, and definite petitions of His model Prayer, our Lord should have introduced one that could be understood only if its words were construed in an abnormal sense, one that could be made intelligible only by an elaborate and arbitrary paraphrase.
Yet it seems nearly as impossible to disregard the precise wording, as Bishop Gore bids us, and "to interpret the prayer more generally as an expression of self-distrust." That, no doubt, it is. Yet it cannot be merely to express our self-distrust that we are bidden to pray "Bring us not into temptation," especially when we remember that only by meeting temptation can we gain strength. Would our Lord wish our self-distrust to be expressed by asking that we should miss the one experience which makes spiritual growth possible? No; the explanation of these so simple and direct words must itself be direct and simple. It must lie within the words themselves, not in misty implications which may be drawn from them. And such an explanation seems ready to our hand.
III
The petition is that we may not be brought into temptation. That is quite different from a petition that we may not be brought unto temptation. As if to stress the point, the preposition is duplicated in Greek, in a way that cannot be reproduced in English; "do not into-bring us into temptation" would be its literal equivalent. And, as the standard lexicon of New Testament Greek reminds us, this preposition "after verbs of going, coming, leading, etc., is joined to nouns designating the condition or state into which one passes," as of entering "into the Kingdom of God," " into life," "into punishment," and so forth. English readers miss this important shade of meaning in the Greek idiom. In Greek the movement "into" denotes a change for the person approaching not merely of outward position, but of inward condition. To "enter into" the Kingdom of God is much more than to stand within the Kingdom; it is to yield to its claims, to be dominated by it, to take its law as the law of one's being. A valediction ["go in peace" (Mark 5:34)] which our Lord used often does not mean, as English readers are to suppose, "depart, and let your mind be at peace," but "enter thou into the state, or condition, of peace." And so to "enter into" temptation is very different from merely encountering temptation; it is to yield to its demands, to be subjugated by it.
Our Lord gives us no encouragement to ask that we may not be brought to temptation - a prayer, as we have reflected which would be both futile and foolish. But he does bid us pray that we may not enter into it. When in Gethsemane He bade His disciples "watch and pray, that ye enter not into temptation," He knew that within a few minutes temptation would confront them - the temptation of cowardice and disloyalty. For them to ask that they might not be brought to that temptation would have been useless. But He would have them desire that they might not be brought into it, into its power so as to be mastered by it. They must needs approach its walls, where the battle was to be fought. But they need not be led captive into its citadel.
This interpretation of the prayer seems to be confirmed by the remainder of the sentence. It is not an independent petition; the separate petitions of the Paternoster are linked by the word "and." Here there is no "and" followed by a fresh petition; "but deliver us from evil" merely completes and illuminates the prayer "bring us not into temptation." The Greek words at the close may mean either "from evil" or "from the evil one"; on the whole, I think the impersonal rendering, as we have it in the familiar English version of the Prayer, gives us better sense. The point is, however, not of great importance. But we ought to notice carefully the preceding words. Those translated "deliver us" mean literally "draw us away to Thyself," and the preposition is "from," not "out of" evil. Therefore the force of the whole cannot be, as some have supposed, "Suffer us, so far as possible, not to be led into temptation; but when, through our inevitable frailty, we have been led into it, help us to escape again out of its evil." Rather we ask that, when brought to temptation, we may not be brought into it, but maybe saved from that entrance by the power of God, drawing us back from the evil to Himself.
Let us use a prosaic illustration to make the point clear. A man whose special weakness is drink has daily to pass a public-house [bar] on his way home from work. There is, we will imagine, no alternative road. So it would be vain to ask that he should not be brought to temptation. It stands on his way; he cannot escape encountering it. But we can pray that he may not be brought into it; that he may pass by the door without entering. And each time God's power enables him to do that he will be not a worse but a better man, because he has come to temptation without coming into it; he will be the more likely to conquer again next time.
Thus we seem to have reached an interpretation of this sentence in our Lord's Prayer, derived from a study of its actual wording, which is simple, which satisfies, which clears away the difficulties and misunderstandings. No more need we deem ourselves bidden to intercede vainly that temptation may be wholly withheld from us. Satanic as is its source and fearful as are its perils, God's overruling power has utilized it as a means of our schooling in this stage of life. Only by meeting temptation can we follow in our Master's steps, and, conquering through His power, make our characters rise nearer to His ideal. "Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil!" Daily we must come to temptation, yet suffer us not," we ask, as He has taught, to be brought, not merely to, but into temptation, so that we pass into its heart its power, its thrall; daily we must be brought to temptation, but reinforce our wills with Thy strength so that we may resist and not be drawn over the threshold into it; daily we must be brought to temptation, but, 0 God, deliver us from its evil!"
by Anthony C. Deane, Canon of Worcester Cathedral, pre-1939.
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