The Slavery of Death: Part 15, To Live as if Death Were Not

In the last post we talked a bit about the eccentric identity of Jesus, about how Jesus didn't own or possesses his identity, how he received it as gift from the Father. Consequently, Jesus did not fear death, did not fear dispossession or loss. There was no "grasping" in Jesus (cf. Philippians 2.6). This allowed Jesus to step away from the anxieties that drive human rivalry, to step away from the ways we strive for meaning, success, status, reputation, security, and esteem.

In making those observations we followed the work of Arthur McGill. However, another thinker who has done great work in this area is the Catholic theologian and writer James Alison. I'd like to share a few quotes from Alison in this post to reinforce and supplement our analysis about the identity of Jesus and the identity that we are called to adopt.

A key insight for Alison is the way death has distorted human desire. This informs Alison's view of the doctrine of Original Sin. Recall from the very first posts in this series that we've been thinking about what, exactly, we've inherited from the Fall. Specifically, we've been following the Eastern Orthodox tradition which suggests that what we inherit from the Fall isn't sin per se, but the mortal condition--death. Being mortal--in the Apostle Paul's word "flesh" (sarx)--Satan can use our fear of death to tempt us into sinful practices. Being mortal the fear of death is the greatest motivator in human psychology and the Devil uses this for his purposes. This is the slavery to the fear of death, a fear controlled by Satan, that is discussed in Hebrew 2.14-15. This is the work of Satan that Jesus came to earth to dismantle (1 John 3.8). This perspective regarding the relationship between sin and death (what the Orthodox call Ancestral Sin in contrast to the Protestant doctrine of Original Sin) is descried well by the theologian S. Mark Heim:

Removed from Eden we are "[u]nourished by the divine energy, our existence fades into subjection to corruption and death. In such a state, our mortality becomes a source of anxiety. Futile attempts to defend ourselves from it lead us into active sin and estrange us from trust in God. Now sinfulness is more a result of mortality than mortality from sinfulness. To say that humans are 'conceived in sin' does not mean that some guilt or evil inclination is passed on to them in the act of their conception, but that what they inherit is a mortal human nature, which became mortal as a result of sin.

Alison is very much working with this view, but he goes a bit deeper. Specifically, he suggests that the rule of death after the Fall has distorted and disordered our desires and affections. It's not just that we are anxious about death, but that our anxieties have so shaped our desires that we want and crave things that are, at root, death fetishes. We crave things in the Fall that are significant to us only because they help us hide from or flee from death. And these cravings are what brings about human contentiousness and violence. Alison summarizing this take on the doctrine of Original Sin:

Very briefly put, this doctrine posits that, in the light of Jesus' resurrection from the dead, it became possible to look back and see that all humans, ever since there has been humanity (and the codeword for this was 'since Adam'), have been involved, by the mere face of being born and socialized into human culture, in a culture run by death, vengefulness and its scapegoating and sacrificial outcomes. We are thus all born into a culture in which desire is distorted against itself and frustrated.

"All desire is severely distorted" according to Alison because these desires "partake of the imagination which dominates us, an imagination run by rivalry, resistance to change, the longing for security, and by the need to protect ourselves against death by seeking our survival at the expense of others." That's a key insight. In the Fall, in this era dominated by death, we find ourselves among rivals with each of us seeking to "protect ourselves against death by seeking our survival at the expense of others."

And yet, Alison continues, these desires are "capable of being undistorted over time, of being brought to share, starting from where it is, in the life of God." How is this accomplished?

Alison's answer parallels the analysis from the last post. The difference is that, rather than talking about identity, Alison talks about two different sorts of desires. On the one hand are the desires distorted by death, the desires we have because we've been "born and socialized into human culture, in a culture run by death." These are the desires of our "flesh," the desires that Satan uses to lure us into ersatz meaning (e.g., making money, being "successful," being famous, etc.). But in the life of Jesus we find another source of desire. Here, in the personality of Jesus, are desires that are uncontaminated by death. As described by Alison, in a world where death lures us into sin Jesus becomes a counter-lure, a location of desire that is not distorted by the culture of death. Alison on this contrast:

So we might talk about two sorts of imagination alive in humanity, one, the apparently normal one, in which we are run by death and given meaning starting from death, in which the search for meaning is always over against some other, and in which we lure each other on, and which is inevitably futile--haunted by vanity; then the other sort of imagination which has been made available by the installing in our midst of the first fruits of a counter-lure: the possibility that our imaginations and our desire can be made alive to meaning and goodness in a way which does not lead us into conflict and rivalry.

Again, the things we desire are meaningful insofar as they aid us in the fight against death. And as we've noted, this effort necessarily brings us into conflict with others. The way out, according to Alison, is to transcend death. To live as Jesus lived, to live as if death were not. This robs death of its power to confer meaning. And when death loses its power to confer meaning we find that we are no longer in rivalry with others. No longer do we "need to protect ourselves against death by seeking our survival at the expense of others." This is the same analysis we observed in the words of John Chrysostom: "[H]e who does not fear death is outside the tyranny of the devil." Here is Alison on this point:

[W]e wait for grace to bring us to our senses, to our right minds, by refusing all sorts of lures and temptations into easy meaning, and we are only able to do this by living as if death were not. That is, by treating death, and all the ways in which it runs, frightens, compels, hurries, threatens, shames us as something which is not out to get us and has no power over us.

Now one of the things I really like about the way Alison approaches this topic is a particular frame he uses, a frame that I think is really helpful in connecting all this theology with day to day life. For example, you may have been asking over the last few posts, "What does all this look like in practice?" What might it look like to step away from desires that have been distorted by death? What might it look like to live as if death were not?

Well, according to Alison one aspect of how this might look is in the renunciation of "winning." Our death-driven desires and rivalries are often experienced as competitions that we are trying to "win." This could be winning an argument, winning an election, winning a promotion, winning recognition, winning the lottery, winning a fight (of any sort), winning a battle for control, winning in the court of public opinion, winning a struggle for power, and so on. Almost all our rivalries involve some sort of "winning" against a rival.

But those who live as if death were not don't worry about winning or losing. Because winning is only meaningful against a backdrop of death. Winning is only meaningful if death is handing out prizes to winners and losers. This is why, as noted in the last post, Jesus was so calm in front of Pilate. Jesus wasn't trying to "win." Jesus wasn't afraid to "lose" when Pilate threatened him with death. Jesus was playing a different sort of game. Consequently, death couldn't be used to push or pull Jesus, couldn't tempt him into caring about what most of us care about (i.e., winning or losing). As Alison describes:

We are so used to describing Jesus' cross and resurrection as a victory--a description taken from the military hardware store of satanic meaning--that we easily forget that what that victory looked like was a failure. So great is the power behind Jesus' teaching and self-giving that he was able to fail, thus showing once and for all that 'having to win', the grasping on to meaning, success, reputation, life and so on is of no consequence at all. Death could not hold him in, because he was held in being by one for whom death does not exist, is not even the sort of rival who might be challenged to a duel which someone might win. But if death can only get meaning by having victory, if the order of sacred violence can only have meaning if it matters to us to survive, to be, to feel good, at the expense of someone, then someone for whom it doesn't matter to lose is someone who is playing its game on totally different terms, and its potential for giving meaning collapses.

I hope you can see, in relation to the last post, how this extends our analysis of Jesus's identity in interesting ways. Free from the fear of death Jesus is able to "fail." Or, rather, he's able to "succeed" in a manner that can only be viewed, from our death-infected vantage point, as utterly alien and paradoxical. Unlike most of us, Jesus isn't using death to create meaning. Jesus doesn't have to own or possess something--doesn't have to win--to be successful or important or admirable or secure. Jesus isn't driven by death-infected desires. Which means Jesus doesn't have to fight against you or me or anyone else. Jesus doesn't worry that you might get or have something that he desires. Jesus isn't worried about you getting his promotion, moving into his neighborhood, getting the recognition, ruining his nation, cutting in line (literally or socially), your team winning, or you getting your candidate elected. These death-infected desires don't motivate Jesus. It's never you against Jesus. Jesus is not a rival of yours. No matter who gets the promotion, or neighborhood, or recognition, or nation, or position, or election Jesus doesn't experience loss. He's not trying to win against you. Winning doesn't motivate Jesus.

Because Jesus lives as if death were not what motivates Jesus is love.

As Alison sums it up:

[Jesus] models what it looks like to live from within the utterly non-rivalistic creative power for which death is simply not a reality.