The Slavery of Death: Part 23, Martyrological Identity and Resurrection

Over the last few posts we've reached the following conclusions.

Our slavery to the fear of death is largely implicated in the ways we construct our identity, the ways we pursue meaning and self-esteem. We do this by neurotically borrowing an identity from what the bible calls "the principalities and powers," our cultural worldviews, ideologies, and institutions. In biblical language we engage in idolatry, serving cultural images that are, at root, projections of our fears.

The principalities and powers, along with the self-images they create via idolatry, are aligned with sin and the satanic in that the idols have to be believed absolutely (i.e., appear to us as God or as godlike) if they are to function as anxiety buffers. This causes us to engage in worldview defense, denigrating and demonizing outgroup members who call our worldview into question.

What we see in all this is how we create a fear-based identity which makes us inherently defensive and prone to rivalry and violence. Driven by existential anxiety, identity and self-esteem are "enslaved to the fear of death" and, thus, produce sin and "the works of the devil." Here we have a psychological description that converges upon the biblical witness: "the sting of death is sin." More, we also now understand, at a deep psychological level, why "perfect love" must "cast out fear." The fear of death causes us to create an identity that makes us vulnerable to sin and the satanic. The biblical term for this vulnerability, a weakness rooted in mortality fears, is sarx, variously translated as "flesh" or "the sinful nature." Consequently, to step out of sin, death, and the satanic, to move toward love, we need to escape the "slavery of the fear of death" in how we form our self-concepts.

So how does the bible describe this process of salvation and liberation from sin, death, and the devil?

Perhaps paradoxically, though this series makes this obvious, both Jesus and Paul describe salvation as a sort of death. To be saved is to die and be raised again. Here is Jesus on this point:

Mark 8.34-36
Then he called the crowd to him along with his disciples and said: “Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me. For whoever wants to save their life will lose it, but whoever loses their life for me and for the gospel will save it. What good is it for someone to gain the whole world, yet forfeit their soul?

According to Jesus we must deny ourselves, take up our cross, and lose our life. We must die. Literally? Possibly, but in this text Jesus contrasts "the cross" with "gaining the whole world." And given our psychological analyses we get a sense of what Jesus is talking about. We can construct an identity in one of two ways. On the one hand, we can try to "gain the world." That is, we can pursue self-esteem via idolatry, by serving the principalities and powers. By contrast, we can take up the cross and die to this pursuit. In the language of Paul from the last post we can treat "gaining the whole world" as "rubbish."

Given Jesus's language--taking up our cross--we might say that Jesus is calling us to adopt a martyrological identity. An identity based upon dying to the world. In the language of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, "When Christ calls a man, he bids him come and die."

Craig Hovey, in his book To Share in the Body: A Theology of Martyrdom for Today's Church, describes the martyrological identity this way:

Askesis (from which asceticism is derived) is a term that names the training or discipline of self-denial...In the same way, martyrdom names not an ethic but an effect or outcome of the askesis of one's whole life, one's needs, and the way of life that would meet them...The way of of Jesus requires the unseating of those modes of behavior, ways of life, desires, and thoughts that are conditioned on scales of self-preservation, self-protection, and security for one's life...The virtues necessary to be a martyr are no different from the virtues necessary to be a faithful Christian. This means that martyrdom is not a special calling for a select few but the commitment of every Christian and the responsibility of every church.

A martyrological identity means "the unseating of those modes of behavior, ways of life, desires, and thoughts that are conditioned on the scales of self-preservation, self-protection, and security for one's life." We've discussed in this series a great deal what happens when our identities are based upon "self-preservation, self-protection, and security for one's life." Recall the words of Orthodox theologian John Romanides from earlier in this series:

Through the power of death and the devil, sin that reigns in men gives rise to fear and anxiety and to the general instinct of self-preservation or survival. Thus, Satan manipulates man's fear and his desire for self-satisfaction, raising up sin in him...Because of death, man must first attend to the necessities of life in order to stay alive. In this struggle, self-interests are unavoidable. Thus, man is unable to live in accordance with his original destiny of unselfish love. This state of subjection under the reign of death is the root of man's weakness in which he becomes entangled in sin at the urging of the demons and by his own consent.

But as we've seen, this goes deeper than mere self-preservation. Few of us are scrapping for bits of food. As described in the last few posts, we noted how the quest for self-preservation takes a neurotic turn, how we build our self-esteem to convince ourselves that our lives are meaningful and durable in the face of death. It is true that our need for self-preservation can cause us to become violent in desperate survival situations. But our neurotic quest of self-preservation can also motivate violence and rivalry. And it's my argument in this series that the "slavery to the fear of death" is manifested here at this neurotic level.

The point is, a martyrological identity isn't about physical courage in the face of death. Rather, a martyrological identity involves existential courage in the resistance of idolatry, dying to efforts to win self-esteem by "gaining the world."

But note that there is a relationship between the martyr's existential and physical courage. The latter produces the former. The reason Jesus could go to the cross non-violently was because he wasn't existentially anxious. Had he been Jesus would have resisted death and become violent. It's Jesus's existential courage, his relaxedness in the face of Pilate, that allowed him to remain non-violent, allowed him to love.

When we turn from Jesus to Paul we find a similar analysis. The clearest treatment of this subject in Paul comes from Romans 6:

Romans 6.1-16
What shall we say, then? Shall we go on sinning so that grace may increase? By no means! We are those who have died to sin; how can we live in it any longer? Or don’t you know that all of us who were baptized into Christ Jesus were baptized into his death? We were therefore buried with him through baptism into death in order that, just as Christ was raised from the dead through the glory of the Father, we too may live a new life.

For if we have been united with him in a death like his, we will certainly also be united with him in a resurrection like his. For we know that our old self was crucified with him so that the body ruled by sin might be done away with, that we should no longer be slaves to sin—because anyone who has died has been set free from sin.

Now if we died with Christ, we believe that we will also live with him. For we know that since Christ was raised from the dead, he cannot die again; death no longer has mastery over him. The death he died, he died to sin once for all; but the life he lives, he lives to God.

In the same way, count yourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus. Therefore do not let sin reign in your mortal body so that you obey its evil desires. Do not offer any part of yourself to sin as an instrument of wickedness, but rather offer yourselves to God as those who have been brought from death to life; and offer every part of yourself to him as an instrument of righteousness. For sin shall no longer be your master, because you are not under the law, but under grace.

What then? Shall we sin because we are not under the law but under grace? By no means! Don’t you know that when you offer yourselves to someone as obedient slaves, you are slaves of the one you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness?

Paul's argument parallels Jesus's call to discipleship. Christians, because they have been baptized, are dead to sin as Christ is dead to sin. We have been "buried with Christ" and "baptized into his death." This means that our "old self was crucified with Christ." And this crucifixion sets us "free from sin."

What might this mean? It's clear in this passage that Paul is talking about an ongoing process and struggle. Paul is asking his readers to live up and into to their baptism. In light of their imitation of Jesus's death Paul asks his readers to "count themselves dead to sin." How exactly? Paul is clear on this point: "Do no offer any part of yourself to wickedness." By refusing wickedness we act before God as those "who have been brought from death to life." Paul concludes by bringing in another metaphor: slavery. To be dead to sin is to refuse to be a slave to sin. Paul asks the question of his readers: Are you going to be a slave to sin or a slave to righteousness? This echos Jesus's call: "Whoever wants to be my disciple must deny themselves and take up their cross and follow me." We have some choices to make.

I like Craig Hovey's take on this. He notes in To Share in the Body that Christian baptism is "a kind of drowning" that connects us with the death of Jesus.: "The surging waters of the baptismal do not only cleanse, they kill; they do not only wash the body, the destroy it."

But what, exactly, is destroyed and killed? Hovey goes on to describe it as a change of allegiances:

In baptism, a human individual is transferred from the world to the church. The world registers a loss in loyalty; the church registers an advance in loyalty...Because of this shift, baptism marks a definite realignment of power...If the church grows through the initiation of one member at a time, it seemingly shrinks through an equivalent but opposite process. The world attempts to regain its lost members, to secure its former loyalties, and to establish its earlier power. In this way, baptism is an overtly political act. Like the burning of draft cards, baptism declares a switched identity, a refusal to be one thing and a determination to be something else...Transferring citizenship from one kingdom to another is the action performed in baptism, but it also signals entrance into a temptation to trade new citizenship back for the old, to render back to the worldly powers the souls of God's people, the church.

All this fits with the analyses of the last few posts. In baptism we declare ourselves as "dead to the world," counting it all "rubbish" and "loss." We begin the daily struggle to kill off our previous loyalties, the ways we idolatrously pursued self-esteem and meaning. We die to the sinful identity, the "old self" that was enslaved to sin because of the way sarx is pushed and pulled by mortality fears (overtly and neurotically). We do this by no longer pursuing an identity based on ersatz meaning that papers over our neurotic anxieties in the face of death.

That is what the cross represents. We are dead to the world. The allures of the world, which use fear-through-self-esteem to tempt us, hold no attraction for us. That, at least, is the goal. Practically, it means daily taking up your cross as a follower of Jesus and counting the world as loss.

On the other side of this death is the experience of resurrection. As Jesus says, if we lose our life we'll find it. As Paul says, we are alive to God in Christ Jesus. Resurrection, in this instance, is about being set free from the slavery to the fear of death and the life that becomes available to us as a consequence. This is the emancipation and liberation of Christus Victor. As I've argued it, an emancipation that is largely psychological in nature and function. Resurrection is experienced in an identity no longer affected by death. Here is how William Stringfellow describes it:

Resurrection...refers to the transcendence of the power of death and the fear or thrall of the power of death, here and now, in this life, in this world. Resurrection, thus, has to do with life and, indeed, the fulfillment of life before 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.

And finally, we come to see in all this why love is the sign of the resurrected life. Fear, we've come to see, is the enemy of love. Fear causes us to construct an idolatrous identity that makes us rivalrous toward ingroup members and violent toward outgroup member. Thus, for love to emerge we have to be set free from the fear of death. So it stands to reason that "perfect love casts out fear." Finally it all becomes very clear, the relationship between resurrection and love.

No one said it better than John:

1 John 3.14
We know that we have passed from death to life, because we love each other. Anyone who does not love remains in death.