The Slavery of Death: Part 2, Christus Victor

Cur Deus homo? Why did God become a man? Why did Jesus come to earth?

The Bible is pretty clear on this point.

1 John 3.8
The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.

The reason Jesus Christ came to earth was to set us free from the domination of Satan, to "destroy the devil's work." This was the purpose of the Incarnation. Again, as it says in 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.

God "shares our humanity" becoming "flesh and blood" to "break the power of him who holds the power of death—that is, the devil." This is why Jesus was born, lived, died and was raised again. To set us free from the devil.

This understanding of salvation is clearly supported in the gospels where Jesus' victory over Satan is the sign that the Kingdom of Heaven has been inaugurated.

Matthew 12.22-28 (see also Luke 11 and Mark 3)
Then they brought him a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute, and Jesus healed him, so that he could both talk and see. All the people were astonished and said, “Could this be the Son of David?”

But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, “It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons.”

Jesus knew their thoughts and said to them, “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand. If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand? And if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your people drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. But if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.

The gospel of John echoes the synoptic accounts, linking both the death and resurrection of Jesus to the defeat of Satan:

John 12.28-32
Then a voice came from heaven, “I have glorified it, and will glorify it again.” The crowd that was there and heard it said it had thundered; others said an angel had spoken to him.

Jesus said, “This voice was for your benefit, not mine. Now is the time for judgment on this world; now the prince of this world will be driven out. And I, when I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.”

John 16.8-11
When the [Holy Spirit] comes, he will prove the world to be in the wrong about sin and righteousness and judgment: about sin, because people do not believe in me; about righteousness, because I am going to the Father, where you can see me no longer; and about judgment, because the prince of this world now stands condemned.

More, Jesus is crucified because of Satanic initiative. The gospels are clear on this point: the Devil kills Jesus. See Luke 22.2-4, John 13.2, 27; 14.30. Finally, Jesus' entire healing ministry is one long battle with Satan (e.g., Luke 13.15-17; Matthew 9.32-37; Mark 5.1-20). As Peter says in Acts 10.38, "Jesus went around doing good and healing all who were under the power of the devil."

Cur Deus homo? Why did Jesus come to earth? We circle back to the very clear biblical answer of 1 John 3.8: The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work.

Of course, this wasn't the answer of St. Anselm, the author of Cur Deus homo?

As students of doctrinal history know, Cur Deus Homo? was written by Anselm around 1090, articulating in this treatise what has become known as "satisfaction theory." Later, the Protestant reformers tweaked Anselm's theory in the 1500's and 1600's to create what we know as penal substitutionary atonement, the notion that Christ became human to suffer the wrath of God, taking on the just punishment of sin that was intended for us. This is the view of atonement familiar to most Protestant Christians.

I don't have much to say about satisfaction theory in this post. The main idea I want to get across is that in my analysis of the relationship between sin and death I want to go back to the biblical view of atonement, the view of the New Testament writers and the view of the church for her first thousand years. This is the view called Christus Victor by Gustaf Aulen. We've already walked through some of the Biblical evidence that shaped the understanding of the first Christians, the notion that humanity was in bondage to the Devil and that Christ came to set us free, "to destroy the works of the devil." We witness this epic struggle in the gospels where Jesus casts out demons as the definitive sign that the "strongman" has been bound and that the Kingdom of God has begun on earth. Responding to this attack Satan reacts by killing Jesus. But Jesus triumphs over death and the devil in the resurrection.

This motif--Christ victorious over hostile Powers--is picked up from the gospels and carried forward by Paul (along with, as noted above, the other epistle writers).

1 Corinthians 15.24-25
Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.

Colossians 2.13-15
When you were dead in your sins and in the uncircumcision of your flesh, God made you alive with Christ. He forgave us all our sins, having canceled the charge of our legal indebtedness, which stood against us and condemned us; he has taken it away, nailing it to the cross. And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

These hostile powers--the enemies of Christ he must put under his feet--are variously labeled "the devil," "death," "sin," "the flesh," "the (curse of the) Law." The last and, presumably greatest, enemy is death (see also Revelation 20 where Satan is thrown into the lake of fire first followed by death and Hades.)

No doubt, this Biblical view of salvation will sound strange to modern ears. The idea that God was engaged in a direct struggle against Satan to free a captive humanity seems overly dualistic, dramatic, and mythological. In fact, these concerns were one of the reasons Anselm tried to create an alternative view of salvation that minimized the role of Satan in the drama of salvation and atonement.

I don't here want to adjudicate between these various views, Christus Victor versus Anselmian and Reformed satisfaction theories, I simply want to note that my analysis regarding the relationship between sin and death is going to be working with a Christus Victor view of salvation and atonement. Salvation here is about being liberated from hostile powers holding us captive. This is the view of salvation behind the logic of Hebrews 2.14-15, the passage guiding our thinking. Specifically, salvation is being set free from "the slavery to the fear of death" by breaking "the power of him who holds the power of death."

Of course, if I work within a Christus Victor framework the concerns that worried Anselm can worry us. Specifically, do we have to posit a personalized Devil to make this analysis work?

I don't think so. As we've seen, the Bible uses many different terms, almost interchangeably, to describe the hostile forces holding us captive. Sometimes it's the Devil in highly anthropomorphic language ("Put on the full armor of God, so that you can take your stand against the devil’s schemes."). But at other times the language is abstract ("the law of sin and death."). Given this fluidity of language I don't think we have to fixate overmuch on the reality of a personal Devil. That is, "the Devil" appears to name a sinful dynamic as much as it picks out a supernatural agent. Whether the Devil exists or not we can attend to the dynamics in question as these appear to be quite empirical and public in nature. We see "the law of sin and death" and "the works of the devil" all around us and can describe the scene accordingly, even scientifically.

Finally, as we've noted there is biblical material that describes Death, rather than Satan, as the great enemy, Christ's last enemy. The primacy of death in these texts sets up well for my analysis focusing on the role of death in human sinfulness. Christus Victor, for our purposes, will be less about the struggle between God and the Devil than it is about liberating us from the Great Enemy--Death. Which is why Hebrews 2.14-15 frames the issue so nicely. Christ is victorious--Christus Victor--as he sets us free from the slavery to the fear of death, a fear that makes us captives to the Devil and sin.