The Triple Victory: Christ's Temptation According to St. Matthew

by Austin Farrer

Book by Farrer, Austin Marsden

1 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1955

About the author

Austin Marsden Farrer was a theologian and philosopher whom many consider to be an outstanding figure of 20th century Anglicanism. He served as Fellow and Chaplain of Trinity College, Oxford, 1935–1960.

He was the progenitor of the eponymous "Farrer hypothesis" suggesting that the Gospel of Mark was written prior to, and influenced, those of Matthew and Luke, in contradistinction to the "Q" theory of textual analysis more widely held outside Britain.

Reviews

[Nathaniel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Dr Austin Farrer[1904-1968], Warden of Keble College Oxford and contemporary of CS Lewis and other notable theologians of his time has, once again, blown open the doors of the (at times) somewhat dry and myopic world of New Testament scholarship in the '50s/'60s and let the rays of clarity and imagination shine through.

Running through the three 'themes' of tempation we see in St Matthew's account of the wilderness scene in Christ's life; Farrer does not take it for granted that we are to take literally the gospel author's 'Satan-said-to-Jesus' prose, but rather we are to look at the temptations as symbolically knitting up past prophecy and eschatological expectancy in the life of Christ.

The reader wishing to familiarise themselves with Farrer's, often controversial, 'realist'approach to imigary and inspiration in scripture, and how to seperate the literal from the metaphorical, can start with no better text.

All in all it leaves the reader with a real sense of the heat and anguish of the spiritual warfare Jesus experienced, how that speaks to us today, and how it may help the reader in the future.

[Joshua]

Excellent study of Christ's temptation in Matthew's gospel. Nice typological insights throughout and an interesting final chapter on echoes of Christ's temptation in the sermon on the mount.