The Slavery of Death: Part 17, Death and the Powers

In the last post of this series we started a discussion about how we might become "possessed" by the principalities and powers. The question going forward is how this "satanic" or "demonic" possession is associated with death. Again, from the very beginning this series has been contemplating a sort of reversal regarding the relationship between sin and death. Protestants tend to think that sin is the cause of death. The Eastern Orthodox, by contrast, tend to think of death being the cause of sin (once the Ancestral/Original Sin got the process started). Biblically, the causation seems to go both ways:

Sin causing Death:
"The wages of sin is death." (Rom. 6.23)

Death causing Sin:
"The sting of death is sin." (1 Cor. 15.56)

In this series we've been working with the Orthodox formulation--"the sting of death is sin." But again, the causality here is mutual and reinforcing. Earlier in this series I made the following diagram to illustrate this cycle:


The Ancestral Sin begins the process, separating us from the Divine Source of Life. This introduces death into human experience. Separated from Life humans are mortal animals--in the words of Paul we are sarx ("flesh"). Consequently, when death is brought to bear upon sarx we act out in sinful ways. As mortal animals we default to a Darwinian survival ethic defending against loss, deprivation and death. These actions, however, continue to keep us separated from God and, thus, the cycle repeats itself.

Biblically, the psychology of this cycle is wonderfully captured by our orienting text:

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.

That is, the fear of death, as illustrated above, keeps us stuck in the cycle of sin and death.

In light of all this, the issue we began to ponder in the last post is how the satanic might be involved with the fear of death. As it says in Hebrews, the devil "holds the power of death" and, through that power, holds humanity captive.

So how are we to think about the relationship between the satanic and death? An appeal to the devil seems superfluous. Isn't death, all by itself, scary enough? Can't we just talk about death and its impact upon human psychology and leave the devil out of it?

If we did I think we'd be missing something important. And here's why. Few of us live close to death. We have enough to meet our basic needs, and much, much more. So death, real survival pressures, isn't something we regularly face. (Though many people in the world do face these direct pressures. We're all aware of the fact that 15,000-30,000 children will die of starvation today.)

So, given that our wealth has insulated us from the direct assault of death how can it be said that we live enslaved to the fear of death?

It is here where I think an analysis of the satanic principalities and powers will prove helpful. We don't notice our enslavement because, as I've argued, our fear of death is largely neurotic and unconscious. In biblical language, the slavery to death has more to do with idolatry than with a direct survival threat.

In the last post we began to get our heads around what this might look like. Specifically, following the work of Walter Wink we can think of the principalities and powers as the spirituality embodied in various human arrangements, generally power arrangements. In light of that what we now need to do is to connect that spirituality with death.

Going forward I am going to make the following argument: Death is the spirituality of the principalities and powers. Thus, to be "possessed" by the principalities and powers--to be engaged in idolatry, wittingly or unwittingly--is to be possessed by death.

How shall we connect the powers to death? Well, if Walter Wink helped us think about the spirituality of the powers, William Stringfellow will help us see how that spirituality is characterized by the idolatry of death.

Regular readers know I love Stringfellow. I've quoted him extensively over the last few years, and am about to do so again. So if you are familiar with Stringfellow's work you might want to stop here. But before you surf away let me make this point. The reason I love Stringfellow is that he has helped me make a connection between the biblical language of the principalities and powers with the psychological analysis of Ernest Becker in his books The Denial of Death and Escape from Evil. If you've read both Stringfellow and Becker you'll be nodding right now with a smile on your face. You likely can see the connections I will make in the posts to come.

But if you are new to either Becker or Stringfellow then keep reading. For the rest of this post I'll sketch how Stringfellow connects the powers to death. In the posts to follow I'll build a bridge between Stringfellow--and through him the entire biblical witness and Christus Victor theology--and the psychological work of Ernest Becker.

A distinctive feature of Stringfellow's take on the powers is how wide he casts the net. The powers don't just include human power relations (e.g., governments, organizations) but any bit of culture that has power and influence over people. One of Stringfellow's descriptions of the Powers:

According to the Bible, the principalities are legion in species, number, variety and name. They are designated by such multifarious titles as powers, virtues, thrones, authorities, dominions, demons, princes, strongholds, lords, angels, gods, elements, spirits…

And if some of these seem quaint, transposed into contemporary language they lose quaintness and the principalities become recognizable and all too familiar: they include all institutions, all ideologies, all images, all movements, all causes, all corporations, all bureaucracies, all traditions, all methods and routines, all conglomerates, all races, all nations, all idols. Thus, the Pentagon or the Ford Motor Company or Harvard University or the Hudson Institute or Consolidated Edison or the Diners Club or the Olympics or the Methodist Church or the Teamsters Union are principalities. So are capitalism, Maoism, humanism, Mormonism, astrology, the Puritan work ethic, science and scientism, white supremacy, patriotism, plus many, many more—sports, sex, any profession or discipline, technology, money, the family—beyond any prospect of full enumeration. The principalities and powers are legion.

The important part of this description for our purposes is that life is saturated with the powers. Anything that influences us, anything that dominates our thoughts, feelings or behavior is implicated in the powers:

People are veritably besieged, on all sides, at every moment simultaneously by these claims and strivings of the various powers each seeking to dominate, usurp, or take a person’s time, attention, abilities, effort; each grasping at life itself; each demanding idolatrous service and loyalty. In such a tumult it becomes very difficult for a human being even to identify the idols that would possess him or her…

Most of us spend our lives serving one or more of these powers. We serve an institution, a nation, a religious denomination, a theological system, a political party, an employer, an ideology. In biblical language this is called idolatry. Effectively it is being "demon possessed." Stringfellow on the dynamics of this possession:

[The Power] is in conflict with the person until the person surrenders life in one fashion or another to the principality. The principality requires not only recognition and adulation as an idol from movie fans or voters or the public, but also demands that the person of the same name give up his or her life as a persons to the service and homage of the image. And when that surrender is made, the person in fact dies, though not yet physically. For at that point one is literally possessed by one's own image.

Importantly for our purposes, Stringfellow goes on to connect the powers with death. Being dominated or "possessed" by the powers is to be involved in the idolatry of death. Stringfellow on this association:

…history discloses that the actual meaning of such human idolatry of nations, institutions, or other principalities is death. Death is the only moral significance that a principality proffers human beings. That is to say, whatever intrinsic moral power is embodied in a principality—for a great corporation, profit, for example; or for a nation, hegemony; or for an ideology, conformity—that is sooner or later suspended by the greater moral power of death. Corporations die. Nations die. Ideologies die. Death survives them all. Death is—apart from God—the greatest moral power in this world, outlasting and subduing all other powers no matter how marvelous they may seem for the time being. This means, theologically speaking, that the object of allegiance and servitude, the real idol secreted within all idolatries, the power above all principalities and powers—the idol of all idols—is death.

The point for Stringfellow is that the powers, like people, are motivated to survive. Thus, we serve the powers to help them fend off death. But this service is ultimately futile. The power cannot survive apart from God. Consequently, every bit of energy we give to the powers is, in the end, given to death. Death here is revealed to be, as it works through the powers, the great moral force in the world:

Death, after all, is no abstract idea, nor merely a destination in time, nor just an occasional happening, nor only a reality for human beings, but, both biblically and empirically, death names a moral power claiming sovereignty over all people and all things in history. Apart from God, death is a living power greater--because death survives them all--than any other moral power in this world of whatever sort: human beings, nations, corporations, cultures, wealth, knowledge, fame or memory, language, the arts, race, religion.

Let's summarize all this and start building bridges with the work of Ernest Becker. A key idea in Becker's thinking is how we are all motivated by self-esteem--the desire to live a life worthy of respect and approbation. But to get this self-esteem we have to spend our lives in service to some power. Stated more strongly, self-esteem is granted by the powers. We are successful because we've served a power well. We help the company make money. We help the church grow. We help our candidate win the election. We spend our lives trying to collect the various "blue ribbons" handed out by the powers. These blue ribbons form the substance of our self-esteem and self-definition.

But at the end of the day, according to Stringfellow, all that work, all those successes and blue ribbons, are in the service of death. In a hundred years or five hundred years the company or institution we are serving isn't going to exist. So what does that say about all those blue ribbons we got? And even if our nation or religious denomination does survive for a millennium who is going to remember our blue ribbons? No one. Just read the book of Ecclesiastes. All those blue ribbons are just vanity of vanities.

What this means is that death saturates our identity. This is the Great Lie from the Father of Lies. All those blue ribbons--all those things that prop up our self-esteem--are revealed to be driven by the idolarty of death. The power wanted to survive. So we helped. And we got a blue ribbon for our efforts. People applauded us and we felt "successful." But what were we doing the entire time? Playing the survival game. Death was was calling the shots and running the show.

That conclusion might be hard to believe. The work of Ernest Becker will help us see this more clearly. For now we just want to begin to explore the association between the powers and death. In addition, we see once again how resurrection involves freedom from the fear of death. Let's let Stringfellow have the last word on how the resurrection life is a life freed from demonic idolatry and the "slavery to the fear of death":

[Christ's] power over death is effective not just at the terminal point of a person's life but throughout one's life, during this life in this world, right now. This power is effective in the times and places in the daily lives of human beings when they are so gravely and relentlessly assailed by the claims of principalities for an idolatry that, in spite of all disguises, really surrenders to death as the reigning presence in the life of the world. His resurrection means the possibility of living in this life, in the very midst of death's works, safe and free from death.