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The Last Temptation of Satan: Divine Deception in Greek Patristic Interpretations of the Passion Narrative

N Introduction A remarkable number of Greek patristic thinkers gave expression to the theory that Satan was deceived by Christ, who exploited his adversary's mistaken belief that the object of his desires was a mere man and not the deity incarnate. Driven by an insatiable hunger for human bodies, the demonic appetite was inexorably drawn to devour the seemingly mortal flesh of Jesus. That flesh, however, was but a seductive lure concealing the power of divinity that brought about Satan's downfall and even (in some traditions) his salvation. The crucial events in this drama of deception were Christ's agony in the garden and his suffering on the cross, moments of apparent weakness and vulnerability which patristic writers daringly reconfigured as the cunning ruses of a master strategist defeating the enemy through his own devices. Such a radical reinterpretation of Scripture was achieved largely through the tools of typological and allegorical exegesis, by which patristic writers sought to explain - and thereby eliminate - the "shame and folly of the cross" (compare 1 Cor 1:18-25; Heb 12:2; Deut 21:23), along with the attendant spectacles of Christ's apparent fearfulness and uncontrolled emotion.