The Slavery of Death: Part 16, To Destroy the Devil's Work

In the last few posts in this series we've been talking about how a "slavery to the fear of death" (Heb. 2.14-15) creates sin. I now want to turn in this series to how this slavery is associated with the satanic.

Recall, Christus Victor atonement isn't preoccupied with human guilt. Rather, the focus is on how humans are enslaved to various spiritual forces. Salvation comes to us, then, when we are liberated from these hostile powers. As Gustaf Aulen describes:

[Christus Victor's] central theme is the idea of the Atonement as a Divine conflict and victory; Christ--Christus Victor--fights against and triumphs over the evil powers of the world, the 'tyrants' under which mankind is in bondage and suffering, and in Him God reconciles the world to Himself.

In Scripture the main "tyrants" are described as three, practically interchangeable, forces: Sin, Death, and the Devil--the unholy Trinity. Christ comes to set us free from these forces. As Aulen goes on to describe:

The work of Christ is first and foremost a victory over the powers which hold mankind in bondage: sin, death, and the devil. These may be said to be in a measure personified, but in any case they are objective powers; and the victory of Christ creates a new situation, bringing their rule to an end, and setting men free from their dominion.

If you've been keeping up with this series all this is very familiar. The trouble comes, however, with how modern readers of the bible are to understand sin, death and the devil to be "objective powers." Over the last few posts I've shown how, objectively and empirically, a fear of death motivates human sinfulness. There is an objective "power" in death that causes sin. But what about the devil? Again, let's recall two of the key passages guiding our meditations:

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

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.

What are we to do, as modern readers, with these references to the devil? As Aulen notes, one of the reasons Christus Victor atonement fell on hard times (replaced with the now ascendant substitutionary theories of atonement) was that it became difficult for modern readers to deal with the dualism inherent in texts like the ones we've been working with. The whole "devil holding humanity captive" idea seems a bit exotic, primitive and superstitious. Death is something we can work with, but the devil? Aulen describes how liberal theologians came to reject the thinking of the early Church Fathers:

[Modern, "liberal" theologians were] inclined to be critical of the forms in which the patristic teaching had usually expressed itself. They disliked intensely the 'mythological' language of the early church about Christ's redemptive work, and the realistic, often undeniably grotesque imagery, in which the victory of Christ over the devil, or the deception of the devil, was depicted in lurid colours. Thus the whole dramatic view was branded as 'mythological.' The matter was settled. The patristic teaching was of inferior value, and could be summarily relegated to the nursery or the lumber-room of theology.

Again, a part of this rejection was the dualism inherent in Christus Victor atonement:

Dualism was not popular with the Liberal Protestant theology of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; but the classic idea of the Atonement is dualistic and dramatic: it depicts the drama of the Atonement against a dualistic background. If Dualism is eliminated, it is impossible to go on thinking of the existence of powers hostile to God, and the basis of the classic view has been dissolved away.

So this is an issue we are going to have to struggle with if we want to go forward with a robust vision of Christus Victor. That is, it is all well and good to describe how our fear of death can motivate selfishness and sinfulness. It's quite another thing to describe the "satanic powers" holding humanity captive.

So, how are we going to deal with the dualism inherent in Christus Victor theology? And how might we connect bondage to the "satanic powers" to everything else we've been discussing regarding the "slavery to death"? How are the devil and death related? These questions move us into the final act of this series, a consideration of how the principalities and powers are implicated in our "slavery to the fear of death."

My analysis of the powers, and many of you will see this coming, is going to rely on the work of Walter Wink. Specifically, I'm going to use Wink's work on the issue of dualism, the issue that makes a lot of people squirm when in comes to Christus Victor theology.

(Note for regular readers: If you've read my posts on the demonic you are already familiar with what I'm about to say. So you might elect to stop here, noting that, at this point in the argument, I'm using Wink's treatment of the demonic.)

The heart of Wink's analysis is to note the tight association between the physical and the spiritual in the biblical descriptions of the principalities and powers, the "hostile forces" holding humanity captive. In one sense, when it comes to the powers a part of the problem for modern readers of the bible is that we are actually too dualistic. More dualistic, in one sense, than the biblical authors. When modern Christians talk about the devil or demons they are generally conjuring up ghostlike spirits, entities wholly disconnected from physical manifestations of power. In the bible, however, you don't see such a stark separation. This is, perhaps, best observed by taking an inventory of the phrase "principalities and powers" in the New Testament.

The phrase archai kai exousiai--translated "principalities and powers"--occurs ten times in the New Testament. In the gospel of Luke, the only occurrences of the phrase in the gospels, the pairing "principalities and powers" occurs twice. In both occurrences the phrase refers to human political institutions:

Luke 12:11
"When you are brought before synagogues, rulers and authorities, do not worry about how you will defend yourselves or what you will say...

Luke 20:20
Keeping a close watch on him, they sent spies, who pretended to be honest. They hoped to catch Jesus in something he said so that they might hand him over to the power and authority of the governor.

The other eight occurrences of archai kai exousiai occur in the epistles:

1 Corinthians 15.24
Then the end will come, when he hands over the kingdom to God the Father after he has destroyed all dominion, authority and power.

Colossians 1.16
For by him all things were created: things in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or powers or rulers or authorities; all things were created by him and for him.

Colossians 2.10
...and you have been given fullness in Christ, who is the head over every power and authority.

Colossians 2.15
And having disarmed the powers and authorities, he made a public spectacle of them, triumphing over them by the cross.

Ephesians 1.21
...far above all rule and authority, power and dominion, and every title that can be given, not only in the present age but also in the one to come.

Ephesians 3.10
His intent was that now, through the church, the manifold wisdom of God should be made known to the rulers and authorities in the heavenly realms...

Ephesians 6.12
For our struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the powers of this dark world and against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly realms.

Titus 3.1
Remind the people to be subject to rulers and authorities, to be obedient, to be ready to do whatever is good...

We can make a couple of observations about these passages. First, yes, there are times when the language of the powers seems to be picking out strictly "spiritual" powers (e.g., Eph. 6.12). However, there are other times when the phrase is picking out a strictly human, generally political, powers. (e.g., Titus 3.1). But more often than not, most of the passages are blending the two powers. For example, Colossians 1.16 clearly refers to both visible and invisible powers, powers in heaven and on earth.

The other thing to note is that the language of the powers often occurs in longer lists. In the New Testament these lists include: Chief priests, rulers, people, scribes, synagogues, kingdoms, thrones, angels, authority, glory, majesty, dominion, life, and death. Such lists continue highlight the conflation of physical and spiritual power in the New Testament.

The point being that while there is a dualism at work here it's not as dualistic as we might think. The regulating idea for the ancients seems to be this: manifestations of physical (generally political) power were manifestations of spiritual power. The two--physical power and spiritual power--were two sides of the same coin.

This might seem strange until we realize how the ancients viewed their kings as divinities. And if not themselves divine, the rulers were at least ordained by God. To defy the king was to defy God.

And, even though we consider ourselves more "enlightened," nothing much had changed. We also sacralize the political realm. It's God and Country. People aspire to create a Christian nation, a nation where political rule/power mirrors spiritual rule/power. Pondering these modern-day dynamics should help us get inside what the bible means by "principalities and powers."

Now it is true that the ancients, given their cosmology, saw the spiritual powers as existing "over" or "above" the physical powers. That spatial orientation is hard for modern readers to get their heads around. In light of this, how are we to keep the tight association between the physical and spiritual powers?

Wink suggests swapping an Above/Below orientation for an Inside/Outside orientation. Specifically, rather than seeing the spiritual as "above" the physical we see the spiritual as the "inner" life--the "heart" and "soul" if you will--of a power system. For example, when we talk about a nation, an economic system, an organization, or a corporation--each examples of power relations--we can talk about the "spirituality" each embodies. We might find a particular power system to be, say, humane or inhumane. These descriptions are picking out the "spirituality" of the power. And with this reframing in hand, we can describe the satanic and demonic as the spirituality embodied in death-dealing power structures. Here is Wink describing this:

What I propose is viewing the spiritual Powers not as separate heavenly or ethereal entities but as the inner aspect of material or tangible manifestation of power...the "principalities and powers" are the inner or spiritual essence, or gestalt, of an institution or state or system; that the "demons" are the psychic or spiritual power emanated by organizations or individuals or subaspects of individuals whose energies are bent on overpowering others; that "gods" are the very real archetypal or ideological structures that determine or govern reality and its mirror, the human brain...and that "Satan" is the actual power that congeals around collective idolatry, injustice, or inhumanity, a power that increases or decreases according to the degree of collective refusal to choose higher values.

Now it might be objected, if this is the case, that the word "spirituality" isn't really necessary. If all we are talking about are physical powers why make recourse to the word "spiritual"? Mainly because it is very difficult to physically locate the powers in the scientific laboratory. For example, the phrase "Give me liberty or give me death!" holds great sway over many people. That sentiment has power over people. But where is that power physically located? In atoms? In the strong nuclear force?

The point being, the use of "spiritual" or "religious" language here isn't a regression into superstition. It is, rather, an attempt to describe how various supra-physical forces have power over human affairs. Powers that are hard to pin down in the laboratory. Powers that will outlive us. (For the scientifically inclined I tend to think of these powers as emergent properties of physical systems which exert downward causation.) Wink on this point:

Every organization is made up of humans who make its decisions and are responsible for its success or failure, but these institutions tend to have a suprahuman quality. Although created and staffed by humans, decisions are not made so much by people as for them, out of the logic of institutional life itself. And because the institution usually antedates and outlasts its employees, it develops and imposes a set of traditions, expectations, beliefs, and values on everyone in its employ. Usually unspoken, unacknowledged, and even unknown, this invisible, transcendent network of determinants constrains behavior far more rigidly than any printed set of rules could ever do. It governs dress, social class, life-expectations, even choice of marriage partner (or abstention). This institutional momentum through time and space perpetuates a self-image, a corporate personality, and an institutional spirit which the more discerning are able to grasp as a totality and weigh for its relative sickness or health.

...The institution, however, is the totality of its activities and as such is a mostly invisible object. When we confuse what the eye beholds with the totality, we commit the same reductionistic fallacy as those Colossians who mistook the basic elements (stoicheia) of things for the ultimate reality (Col. 2:8,20). The consequence of such confusion is always slavery to the unseen power behind the visible elements: the spirituality of the institution or state or stone.

Going forward I'm going to be working with this view of the "hostile powers" holding humanity captive. I'll be thinking through how "the inner aspects of material or tangible manifestations of power" keep us enslaved to the fear of death and produce "the works of the devil." With this analysis in hand we should wind up with a robust understanding of how Christ liberates from sin, death, and yes, even the devil.