> Most of your refutations of arguments in favor of capital punishment laws are refutations of arguments I don't believe in either. Capital punishment does not deter future crime. Capital punishment does not provide closure to the families of the victims, or, if it did, does not provide what I believe is a particularly healthy kind of closure. Most importantly, let me dissuade you from the ridiculous notion that capital punishment is (or should be) motivated out of hatred or vengeance. Both are wrong. I admit that I do not feel much heartbreak over Timothy McVeigh (I think I wish I felt more), but I absolutely do not glory in his death, nor feel that any wrong he did has somehow been righted.
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> I've given my secular reasons for capital punishment in another post. I wanted to reply to you firstly to agree with your refutations of many of the other secular reasons for capital punishment, and then to refute your spiritual reason against it.
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> You can't use Christianity as a basis for condemning capital punishment as immoral if you only pick and choose unrelated principles of Christianity and ignore those elements of it that address the subject directly. Yes, "murder" is a sin; yes, all sins are equal in the eyes of God, and but a single lie is as loathsome in His sight as mass genocide, just as ten is no further from infinity than ten thousand. But God, in the Bible, endorses capital punishment and approves of human government wielding that power. What other Christianity-based argument can you have to refute this? If you're coming from a Christian perspective, from the premise that the Christian God exists and the Bible is true, you have to take all of it. And if capital punishment does not reconcile with the other spiritual knowledge you have, your responsibility is to learn how it fits together consistently, not deny the parts you don't understand. (And there will ALWAYS be spiritual things that we don't understand for the simple reason that God is smarter and more complex than we are.)


Wow, I get to respond to the site owner! :)

I talked about my perspective on the Bible and capital punishment in another post, but I'll just write briefly (well, relatively briefly) here.

I freely admit that I am not a Bible scholar and I could definitely stand to know more about the Bible and study the Bible more than I do now. (There *are* some people whom I do consider Bible scholars who hold the same position as I do, but I don't consider that evidence for my point of view. Not direct evidence, anyway, though I admit it is heartening to hear my beliefs defended by people much smarter than I am.)

But I have studied the Bible and I do consider it the source of truth in my life. I try to make it a policy never to discount or ignore a part of the Bible; it irks me when people say a passage is of "doubtful authenticity" or it's "culturally inapplicable for obvious reasons". Culture and the passage of time aren't reasons to change one's opinion about spiritual truths. And any skeptic can cast doubt on the authenticity of any passage he doesn't like. Those aren't arguments.

Still, I *do* believe the Bible must be taken, as you say, as a whole, not leaving out any part of it and *not* partitioning it up into categories unless the text demands it. (No saying the NT is about ideals and the OT about practicality, which I've heard some people say, without any Scriptural evidence. Likewise I'd fight people who talk about the OT God and NT God as separate Gods for separate times or say that the nature of God and justice has changed.)

The reason we have a New Testament, the reason the Christian Church, if it is honest, stands in opposition to Judaism, the reason Jesus came to the Earth and died here, is because God brought forth a change 2000 years ago. I don't believe that from life experience or from my heart's feelings; I believe that because the Bible itself says so.

God endorsed capital punishment in the OT for murder, true. He also endorsed capital punishment for adultery, for disrespecting one's parents and for worshiping other gods.

But Jesus stopped the Pharisees from stoning the adulterous woman, and he never turned in any of the many people who came to him after living lives of sin. He went to pagan cities (the Decapolis) and taught the Baal-worshipers when the Pharisees, strictly following the law, wouldn't have touched them; he let himself be taken by the pagan Romans and chastised Peter for trying to fight them in the style of the Macabees or of David. Jesus *did* have a different style; he spoke out against those who put the written Law (which came right out of the Biblical text) above the spiritual law of love. The OT *specifically* said not to take consecrated bread for any use but the priests', yet David did it and he was not condemned. Jesus' disciples broke the Law by picking and eating grain on the Sabbath without washing their hands; he defended them against the Pharisees. Jesus spoke out *against* the "eye for an eye" principle (that comes directly out of Exodus) and replaced it with the "turn the other cheek" principle. So, yeah, he *did* change things.

Paul changed things even more (or, if you prefer, elucidated changes that Jesus made). He told us that we were dead to the written Law, that the Law had no power to save, and explained that the Law's purpose was to act as a stumbling block and point out sin.

If you go back and look, that probably explains all the times in the OT when God made exceptions for the Law: letting David off with less than the full punishment when he committed murder and adultery; letting Israel off with less than the worst when he'd promised utter and eternal destruction for them; giving Samson a second chance when he broke his vow and lost his strength, supposedly forever; letting Esther off for wedding herself to a pagan king, and actually blessing her and the Jews from that position; Isaiah talking about "mercy, not sacrifice"; David's Psalms about God as a God of forgiveness; even the very first murderer, Cain, having his life spared and being given a mark to protect him. In all these instances, God's perfect will was done, though the written Law he gave was broken.

The OT hints over and over again and the NT confirms straight out what we said all along; the written Law of Moses was not the real Law, not the perfect Law, only a reflection of the Law; and the Law is not God or God's will but only a facet of his will. Hence Paul tells us that though everything is not beneficial, everything *is* permissible; the Law is only a way of expressing God's love and caring for us, which is the higher truth; justice is real, very real, but justice would mean nothing without love and forgiveness.

That, at least, is my interpretation of the Bible as a complete whole, and I am currently too tired and too lazy to look up an exhaustive set of references. :)

So I believe that, yes, God created the written Law of Moses intending people to see that murder deserves death, as, in the end, do all sins. But God phrased this knowledge as a civil law with grades of punishment so that people could understand it and use it; otherwise, it would have made no sense to them and have been replaced by a human-made, less perfect civil law. Without the knowledge of Christ, there was no other alternative; it is our nature to create payback-style justice-based laws, and a life of radical forgiveness is nonsense unless one is conscious of God's radical forgiveness. (This isn't high-level interpretation; this is taken from Romans 2-3; the purpose of the Law and its origins.) Why God chose to wait so long in the world's history before the appearance of Jesus is one of those things you talked about, those things we can't fathom because we fail to understand God's workings; I suspect, though, that there is something in God's will about doing things within the framework of time, in a certain order, one after the other. But why that is I couldn't say, not being God. :)

Of course, Paul does speak of the government having the God-given power to pursue and punish criminals (Romans 13, right?), though, at least in the translation I use, he doesn't speak of the government's God-given power to punish *by death*. (The ruler bears the sword, meaning he has the power to stop wrongdoing by force, but that doesn't, to me, imply the same thing as having the power to execute.) Nor does he say that we, as Christians, should participate in the governmental responsibility of law enforcement and order, merely that we should respect it and comply with it. (If there's one thing the Bible is clear on, it's that we shouldn't do anything ourselves to deserve the death penalty in the first place, which I wholeheartedly agree with.) Hence I would not agree with sending an expedition to bust people out of death row or graffiting the governor's mansion or assaulting police officers because of my opposition to the death penalty. We have to respect the law, and though it hurts me that so many people are taken out of the world without a chance to turn themselves around, I have to have faith that God's will will be done. But this, fortunately, is a society and a government that allows and supports free expression, and I believe that the best way for me to respect what this nation stands for and support the *true* American way is to stand up and speak out about things our country does that I consider wrong, and that includes the death penalty. I believe that the death penalty is one reflection, perhaps the ultimate reflection, contained in the Law of Moses (reflected in all human laws) of God's anger and vengeance against sin, and that it is this Law that has passed away with the atoning death of Christ as Paul tells us in his letters. Human law will reflect the Law, as is its nature, but as a Christian and one redeemed it is my duty to stand not with the Law and the Old Covenant but with grace and the New Covenant, as far as the laws of the land God has placed me in allow me to. That is my understanding of the OT and NT taken as a whole.

I know that we are not meant to understand everything, but I don't believe God would directly contradict himself in Scripture or that he would expect us, Zen-like, to "transcend" that contradiction, accept that he doesn't make sense and get on with our lives. I believe God is a rational God and that he loves us enough to make his Word comprehensible to us to the extent necessary for us to live godly lives, and so I refused to give up trying to reconcile "turn the other cheek" with "eye for an eye". Nor do I think, once one's read through much of the Bible and learned to see the context of each passage, that it's a particularly difficult thing to reconcile. Paul spent much of his writing career reconciling this problem, since it was one of his most frequent problems in witnessing to the Jews.

I'd like to hear what your opinion is on how Scriptural concepts of forgiveness apply to the death penalty and civil law. I'm sure it would be interesting, since our opinions seem to come from similar backgrounds yet reach opposite conclusions. :) I was glad to hear that you agree with me; as I said earlier, it gives me confidence to hear my opinions echoed by people smarter than I am whom I respect. Hope to hear from you!

Ar"Bible"thu"mpe"r