He explores the many connections between psychology and the faith when it comes to this model, and sets forth two main means by which the fear of death leads to sin. He takes to task much of Western Christendom for its insistence on 'original' sin or something like it, thus emphasizing sin -> death as in the Garden as paradigmatic for humanity, and instead demonstrates preference for the Eastern Orthodox model of 'ancestral' sin, understanding that Adam's sin brought forth death, and thus emphasizing death -> sin since the Garden as paradigmatic for humanity: thus, we are tempted to sin because of our fear and anxiety in the face of death. Read moreĪ powerful exploration of the challenges of life in a corrupted creation and the power of the slavery of death, along with the great victory obtained by Jesus in the resurrection.The author begins from Hebrews 2:14-15 in which the Hebrews author declares Jesus liberated people from slavery to the fear of death. 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. 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.

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?

We Believe the Children by Richard Beck