According to Hebrews, the Son of God appeared to "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 does it mean to be enslaved, all our lives, to the fear of death? And why is this fear described as "the power of the devil"? And most importantly, how are we--as individuals and as faith communities--to be set free from this slavery to death?In another creative interdisciplinary fusion, Richard Beck blends Eastern Orthodox perspectives, biblical text, existential psychology, and contemporary theology to describe our slavery to the fear of death, a slavery rooted in the basic anxieties of self-preservation and the neurotic anxieties at the root of our self-esteem. Driven by anxiety--enslaved to the fear of death--we are revealed to be morally and spiritually vulnerable as "the sting of death is sin." Beck argues that in the face of this predicament, resurrection is experienced as liberation from the slavery of death in the martyrological, eccentric, cruciform, and communal capacity to overcome fear in living fully and sacrificially for others.
Reviews with the most likes.
Short review: Richard Beck (a theologian/psychologist) explores how the Eastern Orthodox understand the Christus Victor model of the atonement to reverse the traditional Western understanding of sin bringing death into the world. Instead the Orthodox understanding of Genesis 3 is that the fear of death (if you eat this tree you will live forever) is what brought sin into the world. So Gen 3 is about the introduction of death, not the introduction of sin. So Beck re-tells the Christian narrative from this Eastern perspective to bring new light on how sin and death have power over us. The second part of the book is about how we can use the sacraments to break the power of sin in our lives.
This is a short book, but is a great example of how bringing in an alternative explanation from a different tradition can bring insight.
My full review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/slavery-death-richard-beck/
