Consider the devil’s second temptation, for Christ to throw himself off the temple and hope upon angelic intervention to suspend the normal law of gravity and prevent his demise. On Moore’s view, Christ was “offered” the good of “angel protection” in this episode; he does not view Christ as being tempted to the sins of presumption or putting God to the test (v. 7), nor to the death that would have resulted if God had not intervened.

Jared Moore is anxious to maintain the sinfulness of errant desire, or what has historically been known as the doctrine of concupiscence. As there is much mistaken thinking abroad on that point, that is an understandable endeavor. Yet there is such a thing as being so fixated upon one idea that one becomes excessively sensitive and reactionary to perceived departures from it.

Regrettably, one sees this with Moore. In a recent polemic he assails Professor Dan Doriani of Covenant Seminary for teaching that temptation contains an element of good. Having read Moore’s article eight times, in which he quotes Doriani at length – one block quote is 331 words – and having twice read Doriani’s sermon that Moore quotes, I can attest that Doriani’s point in saying that temptation contains an element of good was to show how it allures and deceives, that people might better recognize and resist it. One should think that such a claim would not be controversial or raise a hue and cry of false teaching.

Yet Moore finds it guilty of “glaring error,” saying Doriani teaches “that there is only one form of temptation, where we are offered good things through evil means,” and that he “argued that you can have a good goal with an evil means and still pursue it.” As to the first, in the sermon Moore quoted, Doriani stated that Christ “wasn’t tempted exactly as we are” and “didn’t long to rebel just for the sake of rebellion, which we sometimes do,” the latter agreeing with Moore that there is “temptation for an evil thing” in its own right, and both suggesting Doriani does not think that there is only one form of temptation. As to the second, it rests on Moore misunderstanding both the nature of temptation and Doriani, who never implied that containing an element of good mitigates temptation’s evil or makes it anything other than depraved, and therefore never suggested one can legitimately “still pursue” a good goal through evil means. I ran that claim by a former Bob Jones Press proofreader and she was visibly agitated, saying Doriani never said that and she thought this Moore gentleman exhibited the traits of a poor writer with such a statement.

Against Doriani – or more accurately, what he mistakenly believes Doriani asserts – Moore erects a two-fold taxonomy of temptation, saying there is “1) temptation for a good thing offered through an evil means and 2) temptation for an evil thing.” If Moore meant by such an arrangement that there is a difference between desiring a good wrongly and desiring evil precisely because it is illicit, one could sympathize. But that is not what he means. Rather, he finds in such an arrangement the difference between our temptation and that of Christ, saying “Jesus was tempted by good things – food, angel protection, and to be the King of kings – offered by an evil means, the devil” and that, by contrast, “we tempt ourselves with sin and death, not with good things. That does not describe Jesus’ temptations, only the temptation of sinners.”

There is much confusion there. One, Satan is a personal agent who used the means of temptation against Christ, and he only directly “offered” him the third thing, the kingdoms of the world (Matt. 4:8-9): in the other cases he didn’t offer Christ anything, but rather suggested that Christ use his own power (v. 3) or expect supernatural deliverance by the Father (vv. 5-6). Two, this taxonomy entails Moore in contradiction and willful blindness. Consider the devil’s second temptation, for Christ to throw himself off the temple and hope upon angelic intervention to suspend the normal law of gravity and prevent his demise. On Moore’s view, Christ was “offered” the good of “angel protection” in this episode; he does not view Christ as being tempted to the sins of presumption or putting God to the test (v. 7), nor to the death that would have resulted if God had not intervened. But if you or I or any other sinner were to do such a thing we would not be tempted with good, but “with sin and death.” Moore sees the nature of the tempted subject determining the nature, good or bad, of the object tempted toward. Hence he sees Christ as being tempted to good things by an evil means, but the rest of us as being tempted to evil things via evil means, because “the moment you desire an evil means, you desire an evil goal.”

This contradicts the scriptural testimony that Christ “in every respect has been tempted as we are” (Heb. 4:15). Pray, how is that verse fulfilled unless Christ was in fact tempted with sin and death? Not only that, but Moore ignores the first temptation in Eden, in which “the woman saw the tree was good” (Gen. 3:6)—the result of which was sin and death. And it is little wonder, for that episode does not fit into his taxonomy at all, involving a person who had no sinful flesh as yet being successfully enticed into sin by an appeal to what was good.

Now against this we would maintain the orthodox view that Christ’s temptation differed from ours because, being sinless, his temptation arose from without rather than from within, and because his divine nature ensured the outcome was never truly in doubt. His temptation had an internal element (notably hunger, Matt. 4:2), just as ours often includes an external element and comes from the world or the devil. But they differed owing to his divine nature and impeccability.

To return to the point, no critique of Moore would be complete without mentioning the haphazard manner in which he appeals to scripture to make his case. He says, “Temptation for an evil object is described in James 1:13-15” and then quotes it in full (“Let no one say when he is tempted, ‘I am being tempted by God,’ for God cannot be tempted with evil, and he himself tempts no one. But each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire when it has conceived gives birth to sin, and sin when it is fully grown brings forth death”). Even a casual reader will note that passage does not say anything about the intrinsic goodness or badness of what we desire, only that said desire results in sin and death.  He then turns to Paul, arguing from Romans 7 and from the apostle’s theme of the conflict of the flesh and the Spirit to maintain that “our internal lusts are always lusts and are always aimed at sin and death, not goodness,” and that “sin is never the pursuit of a good goal through evil means.” Such statements do not match the presupposition of James 4:2b-3 (“You do not have, because you do not ask. You ask and do not receive, because you ask wrongly, to spend it on your passions”) that good can indeed be desired and pursued wrongly.

In the midst of this line of argumentation he says that “a thought is not both flesh and Spirit.” If we grant, as seems likely, that the missing definite article before “Spirit” in that quote is a typo rather than a revelation of a mistaken conception of the Spirit – and even if we grant, further, that the Apostle Paul himself sometimes spoke in such an abbreviated manner (e.g., “to live is Christ,” Phil. 1:21) – Moore’s argument here is simply silly. Anyone who has experienced temptation can attest that it is common to experience unholy, fleshly thoughts (or feelings) and righteous, Spirit-oriented ones concurrently regarding the same matter, and both in great force and number. Indeed, that such is the case is much of the apostle’s point in discussing the conflict between the sinful flesh and the new nature guided by the Spirit: in his words, “I find it to be a law that when I want to do right, evil lies close at hand” (Rom. 7:21; comp. vv. 15-20, 22-23, 25).

But the coup de gras to Moore’s argument is when he quotes Romans 7:13, in which Paul plainly states that sin operated by “producing death in me through what is good” (emphasis mine). Moore actually quotes that statement to make his case that temptation never contains an element of good, and that right after he asserted that temptation is sin in one sense as “we’ve already begun to sin at the first evil inclination or desire.” His whole scheme cannot survive such an absurd foible.

In closing I will simply point out that Moore comes very near to conflating the moral and the natural, and to seeing what is morally evil work such a corrosive effect that it taints the nature of what it involves. Arguably he crosses that line, as the effect of consistently applying his conception of sin and temptation would be to say that, for example, a starving man who steals food in his desperation has desired the evil of theft rather than the good of satiating his appetite. That is how Moore would view such a case, and at a minimum it would entail the moral nature of the thing (stealing) completely overshadowing the natural elements of it (the feeling of hunger, the goodness of the food); though his language is so strong one might be forgiven for thinking he would regard the food itself as being turned into something evil by being stolen. Lest this seem an exaggeration, consider that he says things like “if Jesus had changed the means, He would change the good objects as well.” That is probably a poor use of “objects” rather than a literal suggestion that the food Jesus might have desired when hungry would actually have changed its character; still, it invites misunderstanding on that point. (And hence why I felt the need to read his article eight times to try to grasp his meaning in such statements!) In thus arguing, Moore opens the door to the ancient error of the Manichees, who asserted an independent existence to evil. By contrast, Christian theology maintains that evil is privative, that is, that it involves a privation, a lack or corruption of good, such that evil cannot exist on its own apart from good. But of that high mystery we can say no more now. For now it is enough to see that, in this article at least, Moore’s zeal has outstripped his acumen and led him into some strange assertions. Assertions which you would do well not to accept, dear reader, and based on a line of reasoning that you would do well not to follow.

Tom Hervey is a member of Friendship Presbyterian Church in Laurens County, South Carolina. The opinions expressed in this article are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of his church or its leadership or other members. He welcomes comments at the email address provided with his name. He is also author of Reflections on the Word: Essays in Protestant Scriptural Contemplation.