Buddhist Catholic Contemplative Evangelical General Christian Hindu Jewish Latter-day Saint Muslim New Visions Progressive Christian

Beliefs

Topics

Columnists

Resource Library

Research Tools

Video

Podcasts

Thought Readers

Faith In Media Tracker

Newsletters

Ad-Free & Subscriber Log-In Subscription Support

Follow Patheos

Home
Progressive Christian
‘Spiritual bondage to the powers of death’: Why Screwtape should’ve read some James Cone

‘Spiritual bondage to the powers of death’: Why Screwtape should’ve read some James Cone

Last updated on: October 15, 2014 at 10:26 am by Fred Clark

‘Spiritual bondage to the powers of death’: Why Screwtape should’ve read some James Cone 2014-10-15T07:05:27-04:00 Fred Clark

LOGO Patheos Explore the world's faith through different perspectives on religion and spirituality! Patheos has the views of the prevalent religions and spiritualities of the world.

Richard Beck is one of my favorite bloggers and one of the kindest, wisest people in my RSS feed. He’s someone I like and admire so much that I’ll offer this kind of gushing praise for him even when it’s not in anticipation of a qualifying “but” to follow.

But … (And this disagreement on one point in no way diminishes any of what I’ve just said. Seriously, bookmark his blog. Subscribe. Read it. Absorb it. It’s terrific stuff and he is, himself, a mensch.) … but …

I appreciate the main thrust of Beck’s post yesterday on “Christus Victor and Progressive Christianity,” … but … I think he’s overlooking a great deal of what progressive Christianity is saying. And also overlooking a great deal of what mainstream white evangelical Christianity is incapable of saying.

Christus Victor is a theory of the atonement that says Jesus died and rose to free us from bondage to sin, death and evil. A lot of people who are sometimes called “progressive Christians” find this a more appealing explanation for the meaning of Christ’s death and resurrection than, say, the more recent penal substitutionary theory of atonement, which seems to imply an unlovely, vindictive bloodthirstiness on the part of God. (Not that every progressive type Christian would go so far as to describe penal substitutionary atonement as a ghoulishly Lovecraftian horror — but some of us might say exactly that.)

Hence the appeal of alternative theological theories, including Christus Victor.

The problem, Beck says, is this:

For Christus Victor theology to make any sense you have to have a robust theology of those dark enslaving powers, a robust theology regarding our spiritual bondage to the powers of death, Satan and sin. And yet, because of their pervasive struggles with doubt and disenchantment, along with their post-evangelical reluctance to talk about our enslavement to sin, progressive Christians lack an important aspect of Christus Victor atonement: a vision of enslavement to dark spiritual powers.

Basically, what are you being rescued from if you aren’t enslaved to anything in the first place?

Progressive Christians like the idea of Jesus spiritually rescuing us but they do a damned poor job of describing how all of us, without Christ, are in spiritual bondage. But without a robust vision of spiritual slavery and bondage in the hands of progressive Christians Christus Victor theology is a non sequitur, it just doesn’t make any logical or theological sense.

I appreciate the gist of that — we shouldn’t go around singing “We Shall Overcome” unless we’ve got a clear idea of what it is that needs overcoming. But if we listen to Christians on the progressive side of the church, I think we’ll find that they have a very clear idea indeed.

For me, this is part of the appeal of progressive Christianity. It articulates a powerful, liberating understanding of “spiritual bondage to the powers of death, Satan and sin.” The explanation and exploration of such spiritual bondage is far more serious and substantial than any corresponding effort I have seen in mainstream white evangelicalism. It is precisely this robust theology — the very thing Beck says here is lacking — that has drawn me and many, many others to look beyond the individualist white-evangelical piety of a “personal Lord and savior.” We were looking for something that could help us to make sense of the world — and of the meaning of redemption, bondage, sin, and liberation.

And if that’s what you’re looking for — “a robust vision of spiritual slavery and bondage” to help make sense of the world — then progressive Christianity is a fruitful place to start. After all, where do you think “Liberation theologies” got their name? Or look to Walter Wink on the powers and principalities. Or to Reinhold Niebuhr on the pervasive corruption of pride and the way sin gets institutionalized, precluding sinless possibilities. Or to the recent wave of “empire” theory and criticism.

More importantly, should we imagine it’s possible to have anything like an accurate appreciation for the meaning of “enslavement to dark spiritual powers” without understanding the role of powers and principalities like racism, patriarchy, class, privilege, violence, nationalism, colonialism, etc.? Does anyone really believe that conservative white, male, American evangelical theology offers an adequate understanding of any of those things?

No, if you want to truly understand “our spiritual bondage to the powers of death, Satan and sin,” then you’re going to have to read theologians of color, feminist and womanist theologies, queer theologies, liberation theologies and other theologies of the poor. Those voices are, shamefully, often marginalized even within nominally “progressive” Christianity, but if we’re speaking in broad, general terms about “progressive” and “conservative” camps, then that progressive camp is where you’re going to find them.

Let me go further than that. It is not progressive Christianity, but mainstream white evangelicalism that is “reluctant to talk about our enslavement to sin.” It is reluctant to do so because it is unable to do so. And it is unable to do so because it has, itself, become one of The Powers That Be — or, at least, it has become their faithful servant.

On the other hand, look at the proliferation of young progressive Christian voices in the blogosphere or on Twitter. I’m not sure that “pervasive struggles with doubt and disenchantment” are words I’d use to describe them. I look at them and I see liberation — people who have broken free from dark spiritual forces they have come to understand all too well.

(“Disenchantment” is an odd word. Like, “disillusioned.” it sounds bad — until you realize that its opposite sounds even worse. “Enchantment,” after all, is a kind of bondage. So maybe disenchantment can be a kind of liberation.)

Look at the plethora of young women offering insightful critiques of purity culture, modesty culture and rape culture. Look at the amazing, ongoing discussions of racism, white supremacy and white privilege that Christians (among many others) have been having around #Ferguson. (Including the related discussion of how the term “progressive Christian” can be, itself, a tool of white privilege, supremacy and hegemony.) What are those conversations if not, in fact, expressions of “a robust vision of spiritual slavery and bondage”?

The Bridge Illustration

And what is the alternative that these progressive Christians have allegedly turned away from? Where in mainstream white evangelicalism can we find a superior understanding of the meaning of spiritual slavery?

The Bridge Illustration from the Navigators is a classic expression of the white evangelical understanding of the meaning of sin. But that illustration is about estrangement, not enslavement.

How about The Screwtape Letters?

Don’t get me wrong — I love The Screwtape Letters. I have an audio version of it read by John Cleese that I think is just about the most perfect marriage of text and narrator ever recorded. It’s an insightful, wise, sometimes profound, often hilarious self-help book. It’s a self-help book that offers some immensely helpful spiritual advice. But having said all that, it’s still a self-help book. It deals with the self by itself — detached and excerpted from all social context. (Or, perhaps, presumed to share the same unconsciously normative context of Lewis’ self.) Like most of what you’ll find in mainstream white evangelical discussions of “enslavement to sin,” it has far more to say about spiritual bondage to bad personal habits than it does about spiritual slavery and bondage.

Poor Wormwood turns out to be a hapless tempter, but his devilish uncle isn’t much more effective. Neither of them gives much thought to the weightier matters of justice, and so they are ultimately unable to prevent their subject from finding redemption, salvation and liberation. Screwtape should have read more widely, seeking infernal inspiration from the insights offered by the “robust vision of spiritual slavery and bondage” that he might have found in progressive Christianity.

Screwtape’s job, remember, was to imprison his subject in bondage to death and sin. He failed at that devilish task because his understanding of such bondage was limited to the shallow, inadequate, individualistic understanding of conservative white Protestantism.

If Screwtape had read James Cone or Martin Luther King Jr., he might have learned a thousand subtle ways to rot their subject’s soul with the corrosive effects of white privilege, white supremacy, and white guilt curdling into resentment. If he had read feminist theologians, he might have learned countless new tricks that could bind that subject’s soul in the oppressor’s oppressive chains of patriarchy, slowly turning him into a seething ball of Driscollian rage. Or Screwtape might have turned to the progressive Christianity of queer theology, inverting its insights into a prison that deceives the subject into thinking of equality as persecution.

I’m not arguing here that structural injustices trump personal sins. I’m not even arguing that participation in structural and social injustice is “weightier” than personal sin. What I’m trying to get at, rather, is the way that ignoring the existence of social injustice and our participation in it distorts our understanding of personal sin as well. We can’t say that white evangelicalism understands individual, personal sin while failing to understand social injustice. Because it fails to understand — or even acknowledge — social injustice, it cannot understand individual, personal sin either.

There’s a hole in white evangelicalism’s understanding of sin, death, evil and spiritual bondage. It’s a gaping chasm wider than the one in the Navigator’s bridge illustration. It’s the blind spot that allowed America’s first great theologian to write “Sinners in the Hands of an Angry God” before sitting down to a meal cooked by his slaves. Or the blind spot that allowed America’s first great revivalist to preach salvation from sin while simultaneously working to overturn the colony of Georgia’s ban on slavery.

It turns out that people who were enslaved to enslaving others weren’t in a good position to understand enslavement to sin. Yet from Edwards and Whitefield on, those blind spots have been woven into the fabric of white American Christianity.

A reluctance to affirm that failed understanding of “enslavement to sin” does not constitute a lack of a robust theology of spiritual bondage. It suggests, rather, a desire to instill such a robust theology where none has previously existed.

evangelicals

Previous Post

October 15, 2014

'Are we capable of welcoming these people?'

Next Post

October 15, 2014 'You have to keep scooping out of the boat': More on progressive Christianity and sin

Browse Our Archives

Select a Category class warfare evangelicals Iraq Left Behind Mammon music Uncategorized

Select a Month November 2026 October 2026 September 2026 August 2026 July 2026 June 2026 May 2026 April 2026 March 2026 January 2026 December 2025 November 2025 October 2025 September 2025 August 2025 July 2025 June 2025 May 2025 April 2025 March 2025 February 2025 January 2025 December 2024 November 2024 October 2024 September 2024 August 2024 July 2024 June 2024 May 2024 April 2024 March 2024 February 2024 January 2024 December 2023 November 2023 October 2023 September 2023 August 2023 July 2023 June 2023 May 2023 April 2023 March 2023 February 2023 January 2023 December 2022 November 2022 October 2022 September 2022 August 2022 July 2022 June 2022 May 2022 April 2022 March 2022 February 2022 January 2022 December 2021 November 2021 October 2021 September 2021 August 2021 July 2021 June 2021 May 2021 April 2021 March 2021 February 2021 January 2021 December 2020 November 2020 October 2020 September 2020 August 2020 July 2020 June 2020 May 2020 April 2020 March 2020 February 2020 January 2020 December 2019 November 2019 October 2019 September 2019 August 2019 July 2019 June 2019 May 2019 April 2019 March 2019 February 2019 January 2019 December 2018 November 2018 October 2018 September 2018 August 2018 July 2018 June 2018 May 2018 April 2018 March 2018 February 2018 January 2018 December 2017 November 2017 October 2017 September 2017 August 2017 July 2017 June 2017 May 2017 April 2017 March 2017 February 2017 January 2017 December 2016 November 2016 October 2016 September 2016 August 2016 July 2016 June 2016 May 2016 April 2016 March 2016 February 2016 January 2016 December 2015 November 2015 October 2015 September 2015 August 2015 July 2015 June 2015 May 2015 April 2015 March 2015 February 2015 January 2015 December 2014 November 2014 October 2014 September 2014 August 2014 July 2014 June 2014 May 2014 April 2014 March 2014 February 2014 January 2014 December 2013 November 2013 October 2013 September 2013 August 2013 July 2013 June 2013 May 2013 April 2013 March 2013 February 2013 January 2013 December 2012 November 2012 October 2012 September 2012 August 2012 July 2012 June 2012 May 2012 April 2012 March 2012 February 2012 January 2012 December 2011 November 2011 October 2011 September 2011 August 2011 July 2011 June 2011 May 2011 April 2011 March 2011 February 2011 January 2011 December 2010 November 2010 October 2010 September 2010 August 2010 July 2010 June 2010 May 2010 April 2010 March 2010 February 2010 January 2010 December 2009 November 2009 October 2009 September 2009 August 2009 July 2009 June 2009 May 2009 April 2009 March 2009 February 2009 January 2009 December 2008 November 2008 October 2008 September 2008 August 2008 July 2008 June 2008 May 2008 April 2008 March 2008 February 2008 January 2008 December 2007 November 2007 October 2007 September 2007 August 2007 July 2007 June 2007 May 2007 April 2007 March 2007 February 2007 January 2007 December 2006 November 2006 October 2006 September 2006 August 2006 July 2006 June 2006 May 2006 April 2006 March 2006 February 2006 January 2006 December 2005 November 2005 October 2005 September 2005 August 2005 July 2005 June 2005 May 2005 April 2005 March 2005 February 2005 January 2005 December 2004 November 2004 October 2004 September 2004 August 2004 July 2004 June 2004 May 2004 April 2004 March 2004 February 2004 January 2004 December 2003 November 2003 October 2003 September 2003

TAKE THE

Religious Wisdom Quiz

What did David use to kill Goliath?

Select your answer to see how you score.

Stone Spear Arrow Sword