The Slavery of Death: Part 1, "He who does not fear death is outside the tyranny of the devil."

Awhile back I asked readers of this blog to recommend sources about the relationship between sin and death, with a particular focus on how the Greek Orthodox view the relationship. The idea I'm exploring is a reversal of the typical Protestant formulation:

Sin causing Death

The formulation I'm working with flips the Protestant understanding around:

Death causing Sin

The focal passage I'm working with is Hebrews 2.14-15:

Since the children have flesh and blood, he too shared in their humanity so that by his death he might break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil—and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death.

The idea is that we are "held in slavery by our fear of death." Fearing death we act in various ways that are prompted by needs for self-preservation. Life is ruled by a Darwinian survival instinct that makes us selfish, acquisitive, rivalrous and violent. Mortality fears create our sinful actions and attitudes. That is the key theological and psychological insight.

Given this situation, the work of the Christ is to "break the power of him who holds the power of death--that is, the devil." (See also 1 John 3.8: "The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil.") Salvation in this view is obtained through Christ's defeat of the the devil who uses our fear of death to hold us captive to sin, using our instinct for self-preservation to tempt us into sinful practices. Christ came to destroy both the devil and death to set us free from our "slavery to the fear of death." And being set free from this fear we are able to escape the bondage of sin. This is the meaning of resurrection.

In my research the book The Ancestral Sin by the Greek Orthodox theologian John Romanides has proved very influential. More on this book to come, but at the end of the book Romanides quotes from a sermon from St. John Chrysostom that nicely articulates the view I'm working with:

[H]e who fears death is a slave and subjects himself to everything in order to avoid dying...[But] he who does not fear death is outside the tyranny of the devil. For indeed 'man would give skin for skin, and all things for [the sake of] his life,' [Job 2.4] and if a man should decide to disregard this, whose slave is he then? He fears no one, is in terror of no one, is higher than everyone, and is freer than everyone. For he who disregards his own life disregards more so all other things. And when the devil finds such a soul, he can accomplish in it none of his works. Tell me, though, what can he threaten? The loss of money or honor? Or exile from one's country? For these are small things to him 'who counteth not even his life dear,' says blessed Paul [Acts 20.24].

Do you see that in casting out the tyranny of death, He has dissolved the strength of the devil?

A Table of Contents to the posts in the series:

The Slavery of Death Series

2. Christus Victor
3. The First Gospel
4. On Sarx and Soma
5. The Dynamics of Sin and Death
6. Ancestral Sin
7. There is no Fear in Love
8. Death, Desire and Sin
9. On Sarx, Law and Sin
11. The Pornography of Death
12. The Culture of Death Avoidance
13. Children of God and the Devil
14. Eccentric Identity
15. To Live as if Death Were Not
16. To Destroy the Devil's Work
17. Death and the Powers
19. The Denial of Death
20. The Devil's Work
21. Insurrection
22. Worldview Defense, Love & the Rubbish of Self-esteem
23. Martyrological Identity
24. Timor Mortis
26. Ecclesiastes as Exorcism
27. The Only Way to Live
28. Tapestries of Love
30. The Loving Economy of the Kingdom of God