The Work
The Last Temptation of Christ (O Teleftaios Peirasmos) was first published in Greek in 1955 by Difros, Athens. It was translated into English by Peter Bien and published by Simon and Schuster in 1960. Kazantzakis wrote the novel between 1948 and 1951, describing the composition as 'a great spiritual effort.' It was placed on the Catholic Index of Forbidden Books and condemned by the Greek Orthodox Church. Martin Scorsese's film adaptation (1988) reignited controversy globally, with theater protests, arson attacks on cinemas, and ultimately the film's ban in several countries. The novel remains one of the most contested literary engagements with the life of Christ in the twentieth century.
At approximately 500 pages, the novel covers the full arc of Jesus's life from his earliest awareness of God's call through the Passion and crucifixion, with a climactic final sequence - the 'last temptation' of the title - in which a dying Jesus on the cross experiences a vision of an ordinary human life (marriage to Mary Magdalene, children, old age) before returning to consciousness and choosing the cross.
Biblical Engagement
Jeremiah 1:4-6 - 'Then the word of the LORD came unto me, saying, Before I formed thee in the belly I knew thee; and before thou camest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee, and I ordained thee a prophet unto the nations. Then said I, Ah, Lord GOD! behold, I cannot speak: for I am a child' - provides the novel's psychological model for Jesus's experience of divine calling. Kazantzakis's Jesus, like Jeremiah, experiences God's call as a terrifying imposition on a self that would prefer ordinary life. The prophet's 'I cannot speak; I am a child' becomes Jesus's recurring desire to be left alone, to be a normal man - to be a carpenter, a husband, a father. The divine call comes as torment before it comes as liberation.
Matthew 4:1-11 - the temptation in the wilderness, where Satan offers Jesus the kingdoms of the world, the power to make bread from stones, and the dramatic display of being carried by angels - provides the novel's structural and thematic focus. Kazantzakis extends and interiorizes the temptation narrative: the devil appears to Jesus throughout the novel in various forms (as a lion, a serpent, an archangel, finally as a beautiful child), testing not only his power but his identity. The fundamental temptation is the temptation to be a normal human being rather than the Son of God - to choose the happiness that is naturally available to every human being rather than the suffering that God requires.
John 19:30 - 'It is finished' - is the climax that Kazantzakis gives a radical interpretation. In the final dream sequence on the cross, Jesus lives out the alternative life in exhaustive detail: Mary Magdalene as wife and mother of his children (she dies), then marriage to the sisters Mary and Martha of Bethany, more children, old age in Galilee with a successful carpenter's business. The aged Jesus is confronted in his dream by the former disciples - Paul, Peter, Matthew - who reproach him for abandoning his mission. He wakes on the cross and understands: the dream was itself the last temptation, the final attempt by the devil (disguised as the child) to seduce him from his chosen sacrifice. He dies crying 'It is accomplished' - the Greek tetelestai of John 19:30 - now freely chosen rather than merely undergone.
The novel engages Paul's theology of the crucified Christ (1 Corinthians 1:18-25, 'the preaching of the cross is to them that perish foolishness') through a character called Saul/Paul who appears in the novel. Paul's zealous persecution of Christians, his conversion, and his preaching of a Christ who is 'always dying, always rising from the dead' - a theological rather than historical Christ - is presented with sympathy: Kazantzakis's Paul understands something that the historical disciples struggle to grasp, that the significance of Jesus is not biographical but cosmic.
Author and Context
Nikos Kazantzakis (1883-1957) was born in Heraklion, Crete, under Ottoman rule. He was educated at Heraklion, then at the University of Athens (law degree), then in Paris (philosophy under Henri Bergson). He traveled extensively - to Mount Athos, Japan, China, the Soviet Union, Spain during the Civil War - and his wide engagement with Nietzsche, Buddhism, Bergson, and Marxism shaped a philosophical vision that was always wrestling with the question of the divine.
His religious formation was Greek Orthodox, and despite his departure from Orthodox theology his engagement with Christian tradition was deep and lifelong. The Last Temptation was preceded by several other works engaging with Christ and Christianity, including the play Christ (1921) and The Greek Passion (1948). His most famous novel, Zorba the Greek (1946), had established him as a major international figure before The Last Temptation.
Kazantzakis's philosophical framework was shaped above all by Nietzsche's concept of the Übermensch and Bergson's élan vital. His Christ is a Nietzschean hero: a man who overcomes his own desire for ordinary happiness through an act of radical will, choosing suffering and sacrifice precisely because they are beyond the limits of merely human aspiration. The novel is not an orthodox defense of the Incarnation but an existentialist meditation on what it would mean for God to become genuinely, fully human - to experience temptation from the inside, with all its force.
Themes
The novel's central theme is the conflict between flesh and spirit - the human desire for ordinary happiness and the divine demand for extraordinary sacrifice. This is not presented as the victory of asceticism over sensuality (Kazantzakis is deeply sympathetic to sensory experience and physical love) but as a tragedy: the divine call forecloses the ordinary happiness that Jesus sees in other people and genuinely desires. The 'last temptation' is tragic because the happiness it offers is real happiness - marriage, children, love, old age - and the choice to refuse it is genuinely costly.
A second theme is the nature of faith and doubt. Kazantzakis's Jesus is never certain: he doubts whether he is the Messiah, whether his healings are real, whether God is actually calling him or whether he is simply a confused carpenter driven by religious mania. This radical uncertainty is presented not as a deficiency but as the condition of authentic human faith - the faith that chooses without certainty, that commits without proof.
Reception and Controversy
The novel was condemned by Catholic and Orthodox authorities before many of their critics had read it. The objections centered on the 'last temptation' sequence: the implication that Jesus seriously contemplated ordinary human life, including sexual relations with Mary Magdalene, was seen as incompatible with orthodox Christology's insistence on Christ's sinlessness and his freely chosen sacrificial mission. Kazantzakis responded that the novel was a reverent meditation on the full humanity of Christ, consistent with the Chalcedonian definition that Christ was 'truly man.'
Legacy
Despite - and partly because of - the controversy, the novel has remained in print and in serious theological discussion. It is assigned in theology courses as an example of how existentialist philosophy engages with Christology, and as a case study in the boundaries of artistic freedom and religious sensibility. The Scorsese film brought its themes to a much wider audience. Its most lasting contribution may be its uncompromising insistence that a genuine theology of the Incarnation must grapple with what it would mean for the Son of God to experience genuine human temptation from the inside - a question the Epistle to the Hebrews also raises: 'For we have not a high priest which cannot be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; but was in all points tempted like as we are, yet without sin' (Hebrews 4:15).
Reading Alongside Scripture
Readers should study Matthew 4:1-11 (the temptation of Jesus), Hebrews 4:14-16 (the tempted yet sinless high priest), Jeremiah 1:4-10 (the reluctant prophet), Philippians 2:5-11 (the kenotic Incarnation), John 19:28-30 (the completed sacrifice), and 1 Corinthians 1:18-25 (the theology of the cross).
Further Reading
- Peter Bien, Nikos Kazantzakis: Politics of the Spirit (2 vols., 1989-2007) - the definitive scholarly biography by the novel's English translator. - Daniel A. Dombrowski, Kazantzakis and God (1997) - the best philosophical study of Kazantzakis's religious thought. - Lloyd Baugh, Imaging the Divine: Jesus and Christ-Figures in Film (1997) - situates the Scorsese film adaptation in the broader tradition of cinematic Christ representation.