Capital punishment was back in the news last week with calls for moratoriums. God loves justice, so I am all for ensuring that only the guilty are executed. However, I think the issue often gets clouded with bad reasoning. Here are a few posts I’ve done on this topic:
Ineffective Biblical arguments against capital punishment - There are some seriously bad arguments used on a regular basis and people generally don’t question them. I’ve yet to find one good Biblical argument against the principle of capital punishment.
(Somewhat) effective Biblical arguments against capital punishment - There are a couple decent arguments against the practice of capital punishment – that is, if it can’t be applied fairly enough it shouldn’t be done.
Pro-capital punishment = pro-life - Yep, it really is.
Abortion and capital punishment - A quick look at the volume of each per week in the U.S. Here’s a preview: 19,231 completely innocent humans will get crushed and dismembered without anesthetic vs. 1 who is virtually certain to be guilty and will feel minimal pain. You tell me what the bigger problem is.
Actually, I am OK with unrestricted access to abortions . . . provided that the unborn get the same 10+ years of appeals that condemned killers do!
Filed under: Bible, Christian worldview, Politics, Pro-life
That diagram showing the amount of abortions per week vs. capital punishments per week is quite sobering…
I can’t EVER understand why people aren’t outraged, morified and sorrowful about the abortion holocaust going on here in America.
It’s AWFUL! TRULY AWFUL!!
Just heard about this storyTwin baby survives two abortion attempts on Fox News and found the article on WorldNetDaily.
This is pretty much the sickest thing I’ve heard uttered by a Christian today, and that is saying something:
“God loves justice, so I am all for ensuring that only the guilty are executed.”
Sick to the point of evil, actually, to be said of a God whose Mercy outweighs his Justice — or the human race would’ve been annihilated by now — not just supposedly chastised with a Flood.
ER, I’d quote you some Bible verses, but I’m pretty sure they would be the kind you don’t believe. If you can build a case against capital punishment using Bible verses – in context – I’d love to read it. Otherwise, I’ll chalk up your views to your man-made theology.
You know what is sick? People who murder others. That is what is sick. I think preventing that and administering justice as outlined in the Bible is a good thing.
DOES God’s mercy outweigh His justice? How so? There is clear Biblical support for the practice of capital punishment. And we cannot confuse what is required of individuals with what is the duty of a government in the protection of its people. As punishment for capital crimes is a given and is publicized, how much worse when one commits a capital crime knowing the consequences up front? One might await sentence, come to Christ, suffer his sentence, and still receive God’s mercy. But a society cannot simply grant a reprieve without withdrawing justice for the victim, special circumstances notwithstanding.
I don’t see that God’s mercy outweighs his justice. He seems pretty big on justice.
I think Marshall Art sums it up pretty well.
All theology is manmade.
No need for me to build a case for what I said. It is my opinion, based on my life experience and my understanding of Christianity is all about. It’s not an argument, not an assertion of fact. It is an assertion of opinion — it’s what I think.
My thoughts regarding capital punishment are lengthy — the shortest version is, I haven’t always believed but now affirm that capital punishment can be just, is at least biblically permissible, and is often prudent for an imperfect society in a fallen world — but I would briefly like to set that issue aside to respond to ER’s comments.
I believe that God is perfectly merciful and perfectly just: a deity who ever compromised on the principle of justice, even once and even for the best of reasons, is — by definition — an unjust deity whose actions would be capricious. That deity would not be perfectly holy and would therefore not be worthy of worship.
The Bible is clear that God’s mercy does not outweigh His justice. Such an idea would not only demolish the clear doctrine of an eternal Hell, it would also destroy the necessity of the cross.
The cross — God Incarnate, dying for our sins — is the fulcrum of all history, the central event of the entire universe, and event through which we can draw closest to knowing who God is. As such, it isn’t a triumph of mercy over justice: it is the RECONCILIATION of mercy and justice. God is merciful because He Himself took the penalty of sin, but God is still just because that penalty was not left unpaid.
How much does God love us sinners? Look to the cross.
How much does God hate our sin? Look again to the cross.
If the Father was willing to compromise on justice, even to an infinitessimally degree, He would not have turned away the Son’s repeated, heart-wrenching pleas in the garden. He would have said that the cup could pass, that He would forgive the world for its sins without anyone having paid the necessary cost forgiveness.
Instead, the cup did not pass. Christ carried His cross. And God is wholly just.
Thank God, God is wholly just.
While I was writing, ER added, “All theology is manmade.”
I fail to see how this statement is practically different from the arrogant presumption that God is mute, that God either does not or cannot reveal truths about Himself.
It is a statement I deny in no uncertain terms: if there is one thing I affirm fundamentally, it is the idea of revelation, revelation of transcendent logical maxims, of universal moral truths, and of the character and acts of God Almighty, culminating in the Word becoming flesh and documented in the reliable written word.
It is also a statement that Christianity denies, and I believe that any Christian who insists that all theology is manmade does so against the very foundations of the faith and does so at the risk of his own faith.
Why is it that everyone insists that everyone else take every jot and tittle of one’s interpretation, or be branded a heretic.
The Cross was God’s act of Mercy. It was God’s act to reconcile God’s self and his Creation.
This tomato-tomahto stuff wears me out.
ER, I absolutely agree that the cross was an act of mercy on God’s part, but it was also an act of justice, an act where justice and mercy are reconciled — where, as Psalm 85:10 puts it, love and faithfulness meet, where righteousness and peace kiss.
This isn’t hair-splitting. There is a major, major difference between the doctrine that God reconciles justice and mercy and the doctrine that God compromises on one for the sake of the other.
And, frankly, if you’re willing to denounce Neil’s statement as sick and evil, you should be a little less sensitive to having your position criticized as incorrect and outside of Christian orthodoxy.
I don’t think I mind being called unorthodox. I just don’t agree that “orthodox” means “correct.” All it means is “what most people believe.”
As for: “All theology is manmade.” I’m using this definition: “the rational and systematic study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truth.” Revelation can be one component of theology. It takes man to take revelation and fold into a theology; “theology” does not come from God, per se.
BTW, re: “the arrogant presumption that God is mute, that God either does not or cannot reveal truths about Himself.”
You’ll have to take that up with someone who holds such an assumption. I do not.
Bubba,
What you wrote is absolutely beautiful.
You wrote “The cross — God Incarnate, dying for our sins — is the fulcrum of all history, the central event of the entire universe, and event through which we can draw closest to knowing who God is. As such, it isn’t a triumph of mercy over justice: it is the RECONCILIATION of mercy and justice. God is merciful because He Himself took the penalty of sin, but God is still just because that penalty was not left unpaid.”
This is so very vital to our faith- that reconcilliation of mercy and justice. I hate that some of us in our blind, blockheadedness, miss it so often. We demand mercy, but don’t see that it encompasses both justice and grace. If we would but look at this more often, maybe we won’t take our redemption so lightly so much of the time.
I think the problem people have with capital punishment is that they don’t diferentiate between the terms murder, and put to death. It is interesting that the NKJ version uses the word “murder” rather than “kill.” Ex. 20:13 “You shall not murder.”
My text note says for that verse “20:13 murder. The law distinguishes between manslaughter and premeditated murder. The verb here is never applied to Israel at war, and capital punishment was already authorized (Gen. 9:6; cf. Lev. 24:17; Num. 35:30-34). Human life is sacred because man bears God’s image (Gen. 9:5,6 and notes).” In ch 21, the term “put to death” is used to describe capital punishment for those who murder. In other words, when capital punishment is used, it is not murder. From what I gather from Scripture, capital punishment and war are a part of justice. Such punishments should be equal to the crime that was permitted. Obviously, God takes seriously the fact that man is created in His image and punishes its defilement accordingly.
This is the problem with abortion. The child bears the image of God. The child has committed no capital crime. He is intentionally and premeditatively killed. The most innocent of us are destroyed. It is murder. It is so very interesting that Ex 21:22-25 issues capital punishment to those who kill a pregnant woman and/or her child.
I simply do not understand how or why anyone reborn in Christ would, or could, look for an excuse, reason, justification or anything else, to bolster an opinion that approves of some other human being dying at the hands of another — individual organization, government — no matter how evil, or bad, or whatever, in any circumstance.
I mean, one can stack verses to justify such a position. But why wouold anyone want to???
That is just messed up.
Hi ER,
We “would” and “could” hold that view because – as you noted – we can stack verses to support it. We take the Bible as God’s word and when it is that clear about something we change our view to conform to his view. I trust his view over the world’s view.
I don’t have any glee over a condemned murderer being executed, but I also don’t skip over the part that is truly messed up: The condemned person killed someone else in cold blood. That is a problem worth trying to prevent, and a problem worth applying justice to in a Biblical model.
Peace,
Neil
So: It is still an eye for an eye? Then Jesus died in vain! Knowledge is not redemptive. You obviously know a lot.
Peas.
Hi ER,
Huh?
Regards,
Neil
Bubba,
I liked your above explanation of the cross that I had to post it on my blog today… That is one of the best descriptions of God’s Justice and Mercy that I have seen in a long time. Keep up the good work. You are an encouragement to the faithful.
Blessings
Retract: “to the point of evil.”
Is ER recanting of a point?
That phrase did look a little bad. I wouldn’t think even he would really go quite that far. Big Whew!
I let my fingers run away from my brain sometimes. I’m pretty sure that the Internet exists in James’ day, he’d added the power of the blogging keyboard to his list of comparisons to the power, and danger, of the unbridled tongue.
No problem, ER. Retractions / clarifications are always welcomed in the pursuit of clear communications. I remind myself to think first, then type, but I don’t always listen.
So many things to comment on…
Eye for an eye vs. Jesus preaching the beatitudes… this is a common misunderstanding. The answer is to look at who is being addressed… Eye for an eye is the command for GOVERNMENT to wield the sword of justice and to not show favoritism. Jesus delivering the Beatitudes was addressing people. In the New Testament, he was advising the people not to usurp the role of the government, but instead act in their role of showing mercy.
“Why is it that everyone insists that everyone else take every jot and tittle of one’s interpretation, or be branded a heretic.” …because that is what Jesus declared (Matt 5:17-18)
“I simply do not understand how or why anyone reborn in Christ would, or could, look for an excuse, reason, justification or anything else, to bolster an opinion that approves of some other human being dying at the hands of another — individual organization, government — no matter how evil, or bad, or whatever, in any circumstance.” …. because if we are reborn in Christ, we must follow his teachings as iterated in the Bible. And the Bible teaches that murders are to be condemned to death, under the sword of justice as wielded by the government. It is especially important to note that the Bible prescribes additional requirements on witnesses against the accused to ensure that true justice is being observed.
I love that pie chart.
Fetus’s crime: being conceived to a mother who doesn’t particularly want to have babies with the man she performs the sex act with.
Inmate’s crime: murder, rape, torture. Burning people alive. Beating people to death and leaving them to suffer.
I don’t get it.
[...] next passage deals with various crimes. I have written on my other blog about capital punishment and how while Christians don’t have to support it, there is nothing un-Biblical about it. [...]
I’m not exactly opposed to the idea of Capital Punishment in theory, my problem lies in practical terms. Sadly, mistakes are made and innocent people have been convicted of sickening crimes and then put to death for them.
While it isn’t perfect I would rather have murderers and rapists live out their days in prison rather than have one innocent person put to death.
I speak as an athiest, but I would have thought for a religious person it is easier to accept a World without capital punishment. If you believe in a God I would think you believe it’s judgement to be inescapable. Therefore, why is capital punishment even necessary? Living in prison for another 40 years is surely meaningless when compared to the eternity and infinite justice of the afterlife?
Because:
1. Divine justice and secular justice are compatible, not mutually exclusive;
2. because a person who has accepted Christ will live in Heaven, no matter what;
3. because the death penalty is provided as an acceptable secular punishment in the BIble;
4. because the death penalty provides a deterrent effect, which ensures that innocent people will not be raped and murdered; and
5. because a lot of people who want to excuse criminal behaviour tell Christians that they ought to forgive, that mercy is the better route, etc., when the Bible does not so mandate.
Neil said: Once again the non-theist gets it right where liberal theists often do not. Go figure
. The Bible says we are to forgive, but it doesn’t say people escape consequences from the state.
“5. because a lot of people who want to excuse criminal behaviour tell Christians that they ought to forgive, that mercy is the better route, etc., when the Bible does not so mandate.”
I thought the Bible did mandate forgiveness and mercy actually, but you would be more of an expert than me. Your interpretation of the Bible in points 3 and 5 does make me less inclined to pick up a copy, and now I’m wondering why…
I think one of the most enticing aspects of a God is the idea of there being justice, reward and punishment distributed fairly. Therefore, I find support for capital punishment from religious people a little troubling, as it would seem to suggest a less than total conviction to belief in this afterlife. Perhaps though, a belief in a better World makes it easier for you to allow occasional innocent people to die than it does for me…
“Perhaps though, a belief in a better World makes it easier for you to allow occasional innocent people to die than it does for me”…(As in your philosophy you send them to paradise, while in mine they go to oblivion – Just wanted to clarify that last point).
Hi Lucy,
Yes, as Christians we are called to forgive. But just because I forgive a burglar doesn’t mean the state may not put him in jail to protect others, punish him, rehabilitate him, etc.
If you are only going to read the Bible if it conforms to what you think it should say, then you probably shouldn’t pick it up. If you want to hear what the one true God has to say and how He made a provision for your sins to be completely forgiven, then I highly recommend it.
God loves justice and mercy. Of course we don’t want innocent people to die. That is why I think the Biblical model for capital punishment is important and that perjury should be taken as seriously as it is in the Bible.
Maybe I misinterpreted that part of the Bible . . . go ahead and read it all then let me know
.
P.S. As I often note, abortions kill an innocent human being every time, and there are 20,000 of those per week in the U.S. Contrast that to 1 capital punishment per week for someone who we are virtually certain to be guilty. Now you can see where I put my focus.
Lucy, Christianity teaches that the individual should forgive, certainly, but it also teaches that the government is an agent of God’s justice. In a word, Christianity does not entail anarchism.
You seem to acknowledge at the end of your comment that belief in the afterlife could be compatible with capital punishment: it is. There is nothing in the belief of an afterlife that logically entails an inherent opposition to capital punishment.
Look, the Bible is clear that there are divine laws that entail divine punishment for law-breakers, but this doesn’t preclude the existence of earthly laws that require earthly punishments.
Not all divine laws should have an analogue in the earthly system of criminal justice: the sins of pride and lust, for instance, are definitely sins but criminalizing them would almost certainly cause more harm than good. And, not all earthly laws are rooted in God’s laws: there’s nothing in the Bible that requires, for instance, that the legal voting age should be set at 18 and not 15 or 21.
If God’s laws and man’s laws conflict, we should defer to God’s laws in defiance of man’s laws. That’s why Daniel was thrown in the lions’ den — he refused to obey the law that required everyone to worship an earthly king — and many of Christianity’s earliest leaders chose death over renouncing the Resurrection.
If God’s laws and man’s laws are orthonogal, the Bible is clear we should obey both sets of laws out of deference to God.
And if God’s laws and man’s laws overlap, obviously we should still follow those laws. The thing worth noting is that disobedience means that we’re subject to both jurisdictions: an earthly judge can imprison you for theft, and on Judgment Day you’ll still have to account to the divine Judge for your crime, since you broke His law, too.
Most of society’s most important laws — laws prohibiting murder, theft, assault, and fraud — overlap with the moral law that we are given in the Bible. That doesn’t mean the state is wrong to enforce these laws.
–
About your specific concern, I honestly think the risk of wrongful execution is very overstated, and we have plenty of safeguards to prevent such a miscarriage of justice. If you think those safeguards aren’t enough, keep in mind that the same arguments can be used against a life sentence: if it’s wrong for a man to be wrongly executed by the state, it’s also wrong for a man to be wrongly imprisoned for life.
Hi Neil,
“If you are only going to read the Bible if it conforms to what you think it should say, then you probably shouldn’t pick it up.”
I have picked up the Bible and read some from time to time (I don’t doubt with less commitment than you
), but it’s always been with the more liberal side of things with which I’ve sided. Perhaps the Bible does condone/support capital punishment (I’m not familiar enough with it to say), but I think it sugests stoning adulterers in there somewhere too, which seems a little heavy-handed, to say the least.
From my perspective I find your use of the word “virtually” in the last line of your post quite chilling, but I assume that while obviously you do not want to see any innocent person killed the fact that the person would go to Heaven might make it slightly easier for you to swallow. I think I can understand that.
Hi Bubba,
I actually acknowledged at the end of my comment that belief in the afterlife could be compatible with allowing a few innocent people to be killed in order to bring justice to actual criminals. (A point with which I don’t agree, but then I don’t have the belief in the afterlife
)
And yes, as you say: “if it’s wrong for a man to be wrongly executed by the state, it’s also wrong for a man to be wrongly imprisoned for life.”
I just think one is far, far worse than the other.
Hi Lucy,
Just fyi – the stoning of adulterers was just for the Israelite theocracy. Adultery is still a sin with huge consequences, of course, but we don’t live under that form of government.
I find it ironic that you don’t appear to support any abortion restrictions but are chilled by my concession that it it theoretically possible for an innocent person to be convicted.
BTW, if you read the 2nd link in the post above you’ll see where I gave possible Biblical reasons against capital punishment. It was a two part series where I was trying to make the most accurate Biblical analysis I could and compare it to our structure today.
If you ever have interest, I encourage you to get a study Bible. I like the Life Application Study Bible myself. It has thousands of footnotes that help answer common questions and has overviews of each book, maps, backgrounds on key characters, etc. Whether you are a believer or not it really helps one understand it better.
Hi Neil,
Thankyou for the tip – I am always interested in reading
You can also try the Ryrie Study Bible.
The biblical, theological and traditonal support for the death penalty has a nearly 2000 year history within the Catholic Church.
Here is a relatively new essay from a Vatican insider and theological expert.
THE DEATH PENALTY (1)
by Romano Amerio (†1997), a Vatican insider and scholar, a professor at the Academy of Lugano, consultant to the Preparatory Commission of Vatican II, and a peritus (expert theologian) at the Council.
Certain social institutions derive from the principles of the natural law and as such are perpetual in one form or another; for example the state, the family, a priesthood of some sort; and there are others that arise from a certain level of reflection on those principles and from historical circumstances, and which are abandoned when thought moves on to another level or when circumstances change; for example slavery.
Until recently, the death penalty was philosophically defended, and used in practice by all countries as the ultimate penalty society imposes on evildoers, with the threefold aim of righting the balance of justice, defending society against attack, and dissuading others from wrongdoing.
The legitimacy of capital punishment is usually grounded on two propositions. First: society has a right to defend itself; second: this defense involves using all necessary means. Capital punishment is included in the second proposition on condition that taking the life of one member of the body of society is genuinely necessary for the wellbeing of the whole.
The growing tendency to mitigate punishments of all sorts is in part the product of the Gospel spirit of clemency and mercy, which has always been at odds down the centuries with savage judicial customs. With a certain degree of confusion that we need not go into here, the Church has always drawn back from blood.
It should be remembered that canon law traditionally decreed the “irregularity,” that is the banning from holy orders, not only of executioners, but of judges who condemned people to death in the ordinary course of law, and even of advocates and witnesses in trials that led to someone being put to death.
The controversy does not turn on society’s right to defend itself; that is the undeniable premise of any penal code, but rather on the genuineness of the need to remove the offender altogether in order to effect that defense, which is the minor premise involved.
From St. Augustine to St. Thomas Aquinas to Taperelli d’Azeglio, the traditional teaching is that the decision as to the necessity and legitimacy of capital punishment depends on historical circumstances, that is, on the urgency of the need to hold society together in the face of the disruptive behavior of individuals who attack the common good. From Beccaria onwards, proposals to abolish capital punishment have admitted the major premise, and allowed that the minor one depends on historical circumstances, since they allow the execution of offenders in some emergencies, such as war. During the last war, even Switzerland sentenced and shot seventeen people guilty of high treason.
188. Opposition to the death penalty.
Opposition to the death penalty stems from two diverse and incompatible sets of reasons, and can only be evaluated in the light of the moral assumptions on which it is based. Horror at a crime can coexist with sympathy for human weakness, and with a sense of the human freedom that renders a man capable of rising from any fall as long as his life lasts; hence opposition to the death penalty. But opposition can also stem from the notion that every person is inviolable inasmuch as he is a self-conscious subject living out his life in the world; as if temporal life were an end in itself that could not be suppressed without frustrating the purpose of human existence.
Although often thought of as religiously inspired, this second type of reason for rejecting capital punishment is in fact irreligious. It overlooks the fact that from a Christian point of view earthly life is not an end in itself, but a means to life’s moral goal, a goal that transcends the whole order of subordinate worldly goods. Therefore to take away a man’s life is by no means to take away the transcendent end for which he was born and which guarantees his true dignity. A man can propter vitam Vivendi perdere causas (for the sake of life, loose the causes of life) that is, he can make himself unworthy of life by taking temporal life as being itself the supreme good instead of a means to that good.
There is therefore a mistake implicit in the second sort of objection to capital punishment, inasmuch as it assumes that in putting someone to death, other men or the state are cutting a criminal off from his destined goal, or depriving him of his last human end or taking away the possibility of his fulfilling his role as a human being. Just the opposite in fact. The condemned man is deprived of his earthly existence, but not of his goal. Naturally, a society that denies there is any future life and supposes there is a fundamental right to happiness in this world, must reject the death penalty as an injustice depriving man of his capacity to be happy.
Paradoxically, those who oppose capital punishment on these grounds are assuming the state has a sort of totalitarian capacity which it does not in fact possess, a power to frustrate the whole of one’s existence. Since a death imposed by one man on another can remove neither the latter’s moral goal nor his human worth, it is still more incapable of preventing the operation of God’s justice, which sits in judgment on all our adjudications. The meaning of the motto engraved on the town executioner’s sword in Fribourg in Switzerland: Seigneur Dieu, tu es le juge (Lord God, Thou art the Judge), was not that human and divine justice were identical; it signified a recognition of that highest justice which sits in judgment on us all.
Another argument advanced is that capital punishment is useless as a deterrent; as witnessed by Caesar’s famous remark during the trial of the Cataline conspirators, to the effect that a death which put an end to the shame and misery of the criminals would be a lesser punishment than their remaining alive to bear them. This argument flies in the face of the juridical practice of pardoning people under sentence of death, as a favor, and is also refuted by the fact that even infamous criminals sometimes make pacts between themselves with death as the penalty for breaking the agreement. They thereby give a very apposite witness to the fact that capital punishment is an effective deterrent.
189. Doctrinal change in the Church.
An important change has occurred in the Church regarding the theology of punishment. We could cite the French bishops’ document that asserted in 1979 that the death penalty ought to be abolished in France as it was incompatible with the Gospel, the Canadian and American bishop’s statements on the matter, and the articles in the Ossevatore Romano calling for the abolition of the death penalty, as injurious to human dignity and contrary to the Gospel.
As to the biblical argument; even without accepting Baudelaire’s celebration of capital punishment as a supremely sacred and religious proceeding, once cannot cancel out the Old Testament’s decrees regarding the death penalty, by a mere stroke of the pen. Nor can canon law, still less the teaching of the New Testament, be can canceled out at a stroke. I am well aware that the famous passage in Romans (Rm 13:4) giving princes the ius gladii (the right use of the sword), and calling them the ministers of God to punish the wicked, has been emptied of meaning by the canons of the new hermeneutic, on the grounds that it is the product of a past set of historical circumstances.
Pius XII however explicitly rejected that view, in a speech to Catholic jurists on 5 February 1955, and said that the passage of St. Paul was of permanent and universal value, because it refers to the essential foundation of penal authority and to its inherent purpose. In the Gospel, Christ indirectly sanctions capital punishment when he says it would be better for a man to be condemned to death by drowning than to commit the sin of scandal (Mt 18:6). From the Book of Acts (Acts 5:1-11) it seems the primitive Christian community had no objection to the death penalty, as Ananias and Sapphira are struck down when they appear before St. Peter guilty of fraud and lying at the expense of the brethren. Biblical commentaries tell us that the early Christians’ enemies though this sentence was harsh at the time.
The change in teaching is obvious on two points. In the new theology of punishment, justice is not considered, and the whole matter is made to turn on the usefulness of the penalty and its aptitude for bringing the guilty person back into society, as the saying goes. On this point, as on others, the new fangled view coincides with the utilitarianism preached by the Jacobins. The individual is held to be essentially independent; the state defends itself against a miscreant, but cannot punish him for breaking a moral law, that is, for being morally guilty.
This guiltlessness of the guilty goes on to manifest itself in a reduced consideration for the victim and even in giving preference to the guilty over the innocent. In Sweden people who have been imprisoned are given preferential treatment in examinations for public employment, as compared with other, unconvicted, members of the public. Consideration for the victim is eclipsed by mercy for the wrongdoer. Mounting the steps to the guillotine, the borderer Buffet shouted his hope that he would “be the last man guillotined in France.” He should have shouted he hoped he would be the last murderer.
The penalty for the offense seems more objectionable than the crime, and the victim is forgotten. The restoration of a moral order that has been violated by wrongdoing is rejected as if it were an act of vendetta. In fact it is something that justice demands and which must be pursued even if the harm done cannot be reversed and if the rehabilitation of the guilty party is impossible. The modern view also attacks even the validity of divine justice, which punishes the damned without there being any hope or possibility of amendment. The very idea of the redemption of the guilty is reduced to a piece of social engineering. According to the Osservatore Romano (6 Sept 1978), redemption consists in the awareness of a return to being useful to one’s fellows” and not, as the Catholic system would have it, in the detestation of one’s fault and a redirecting of the will back into conformity with the absolutes of the moral law.
To go on to assert that a life should not be ended because that would remove the possibility of making expiation, is to ignore the great truth that capital punishment is itself expiatory. In a humanistic religion expiation would of course be primarily the converting of a man to other men. On that view, time is needed to effect a reformation, and the time available should not be shortened. In God’s religion, on the other hand, expiation is primarily a recognition of the divine majesty and lordship, which can be and should be recognized at every moment, in accordance with the principle of the concentration of one’s moral life.
Attacking capital punishment, the Osservatore Romano (22 Jan 1977) asserts that where the wrongdoer is concerned “the community must allow him the possibility of purifying himself, of expiating his guilt, or freeing himself from evil; and capital punishment does not allow for this.” In so saying, the paper denies the expiatory value of death; death which has the highest expiatory value possible among natural things, precisely because life is the highest good among the relative goods of this world; and it is by consenting to sacrifice that life, that the fullest expiation can be made.
And again, the expiation that the innocent Christ made for the sins of mankind was itself effected through his being condemned to death. Remember too the conversion of condemned men at the hands of St. Joseph Carfasso; remember some of the letters of people condemned to death in the Resistance. Thanks to the ministry of the priest, stepping in between the judge and the executioner, the death penalty has often brought about wonderful moral changes, such as those of Niccolo de Tuldo, comforted by St. Catherine of Sienna who left an account of what happened in a famous letter of hers; or Felice Robol, assisted on the scaffold by Antonio Rosmini; or Martin Merino who tried to kill the Queen of Spain in 1852; or Jacques Fesch guillotined in 1957, whose letters from prison are a moving testimony to the spiritual perfection of one of God’s elect.
The most irreligious aspect of this argument against capital punishment is that it denies its expiatory value which, from a religious point of view, is of the highest importance because it can include a final consent to give up the greatest of all worldly goods. This fits exactly with St. Thomas’s opinion that as well as canceling out any debt that the criminal owes to civil society, capital punishment can cancel all punishment due in the life to come.
His thought is Mors illata etiam pro criminibus aufert totam poenam pro criminibus debitam in alia vita, vel partem poenae secundum quantitatem culpae, patientiae et contritionis, non autem mors naturalis. (Summa, “Even death inflicted as a punishment for crimes takes away the whole punishment due for those crimes in the next life, or a least part of that punishment, according to the quantities of guilt, resignation and contrition; but a natural death does not.”).
The moral importance of wanting to make expiation also explains the indefatigable efforts of the Confraternity of St. John the Baptist Beheaded, the members of which used to accompany men to their deaths, all the while suggesting, begging and providing help to get them to repent and accept their deaths, so ensuring that they would die in the grace of God, as the saying went.
190. Inviolability of life. Essence of human dignity. Pius XII.
The leading argument in the new theology of punishment is however the one that asserts an inviolable and imprescriptible right to life, that is alleged allegedly infringed when the state imposes capital punishment. The article we have cited says: “To the modern conscience, which is open, and aware of human values and man’s centrality and primacy in the universe, and of his dignity and his inalienable and inviolable rights, the death penalty is repugnant as being an anti-human and barbarous measure”
Some facts might be helpful in replying to this article, which sums up in itself all the abolitionists’ arguments. The prominence the Osservatore Romano gives to the “modern conscience” is similar to the position accorded it by the French bishops’ document, which says le refus de la peine de mort correspond chez nos contemporains à un progrès accompli dans le respect de la vie humaine (“the rejection of the death penalty is an indication that our contemporaries have an increased respect for human life”).
A remark of that sort is born of the bad mental habit of going along with fashionable ideas and of letting the wish become father to the thought; a crude rebuttal of such unrealistic assertions is provided by the atrocious slaughter of innocents perpetrated in Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, the widespread use of physical violence by despotic regimes as an ordinary means of government, the legitimation and imposition of abortion by changes to the law, and the increasing cruelty of delinquents and terrorists, who are only feebly resisted by governments. The axiological centrality of man in the universe will be discussed later.
In discussions on the death penalty, the difference between the rights of an innocent and a guilty man are generally ignored. The right to life is considered as if it were inherent in man’s mere existence when, in fact, it derives from his ordination to values that transcend temporal life, and this goal is built into his spirit inasmuch as it is an image of God.
Although the goal is absolute and the image indelible, man’s freedom means that by a fault he can descend from that dignity and turn aside from his goal. The philosophical justification for penal law is precisely an axiological diminution, or shrinking in worth, on the part of a person who violates the moral order and who, by his fault, arouses society to some coercive action designed to repair the disorder. Those who base the imposition of penalties merely on the damage done to society, deprive penal law of any ethical character and turn it into a set of precautions against those who harm society, irrespective of whether they are acting freely or compulsively, rationally or irrationally.
In the Catholic view, the penal system exists to ensure that the crime by which the delinquent sought some satisfaction or other in defiance of the moral law, is punished by some corresponding diminution of well-being, enjoyment or satisfaction. Without this moral retaliation, a punishment is merely a utilitarian reaction which indeed neglects the dignity of man and reduces justice to a purely materialistic level; such was the case in Greece when recourse was had to the Prytaneum, or city council, to pass sentence against rocks, trees or animals that had caused some damage.
Human dignity is something built into the natural structure of rational creatures but which is elicited and mace conscious by the activity of a good or bad will, and which increases or decreases within that order of being. No right thinking person would want to equate the human worth of the Jew in Auschwitz with that of his killer Eichmann, or St. Catherine of Alexandria with Thias the Alexandrian courtesan.
A person’s worth can only be reduced by actions within the moral realm; and therefore, contrary to popular opinion, it cannot be measured by some level of participation in the benefits of technological progress: by a quote of economic welfare, by a level of literacy, by a better health service, by an abundance of the pleasures that life provided or by the stamping out of diseases. Let there be no confusion between an increase in a person’s dignity or worth, which is a moral quality, and an increase in the possessions of those utilitarian benefits which unworthy men also enjoy.
The death penalty, and any other form of punishment, if they are not to descend to the level of pure defense and a sort of selective slaughter, always presuppose a moral diminution in the person punished: there is therefore no infringement of an inviolable or imprescriptible right involved. Society is not depriving the guilty person of his rights; rather, as Pius XII taught in his speech of 14 Sept 1952:
même quand I s’agit de l’exécution d’un condamné à mort, l’Etat ne dispose pas du droit de l’individu à la vie. Il est reserve alors au pouvoir public de priver le condamné du bien de la vie en expiation de sa faute après que par son crime il s’est déjà dépossedé de son droit à la vie (A.A.S., 1952, pp.779ff. “Even when it is a question of someone condemned to death, the state does not dispose of an individual’s right to life. It is then the task of public authority to deprive the condemned man of the good of life, in expiation of his fault, after he has already deprived himself of the right to life by his crime.”).
If one considers the parallel with one’s right to freedom, it becomes obvious that an innocent man’s right to life is indeed inviolable, whereas a guilty person has diminished his rights by the actions of his depraved will: the right to freedom is innate, inviolable and imprescriptible, but penal codes nonetheless recognize the legitimacy of depriving people of their liberty, even for life, as a punishment for crime, and all nations in fact adopt this practice. There is in fact no unconditional right to any of the goods of earthly life; the only truly inviolable right is the right to seek one’s ultimate goal, that is truth, virtue and eternal happiness, and the means necessary to acquire these. This right remains untouched even by the death penalty.
In conclusion, the death penalty, and indeed any kind of punishment, is illegitimate if one posits that the individual is independent of the moral law and ultimately of the civil law as well, thanks to the protection afforded by his own subjective moral code. Capital punishment comes to be regarded as barbarous in an irreligious society, that is shut within earthly horizons and which feels it has no right to deprive a man of the only good there is.
(1) Chapter XXVI, THE DEATH PENALTY, 187. The death penalty, from Iota Unum: A Study of Changes in the Catholic Church in the Twentieth Century, Angelus Press (March 1996)
This is just what I would have said had I written this article myself, but much less poetically……steve