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by Mark H. Creech |
January 30th, 2007
In a day when crime is largely blamed on Freudian and secularist concepts of evil, the biblical doctrine of retribution has fallen on hard times.
Within the next several weeks, North Carolina is scheduled to execute three death-row inmates on three successive Fridays. According to Associated Press: "Scheduling three deaths so close together irks execution opponents who plan to keep pushing during the coming legislative session for a death penalty moratorium. Perhaps three executions so close together will at least help them teach more people about the flaws in the state's judicial system, they said."1
Despite the fact that death-row inmates receive super due process of law that accounts for an average of 12 years of appeals, and that there exists no solid evidence of even one innocent nationwide being executed in over a hundred years, moratorium proponents, who are largely anti-death penalty advocates, have gained enough momentum in the Tar Heel State to cause Speaker Jim Black to establish a House Select Committee on Capital Punishment. That Committee held a public hearing three weeks ago; and out of 15 speakers who testified, only two — one of which was me — spoke against the proposed moratorium.
Certainly the most striking moment of the public hearing was when Shirley Burns spoke. Burns had a son on death-row scheduled for execution in North Carolina on January 26. [Editor's note: the execution was stayed by Wake County Superior Court Judge Donald Stephens on January 25.] She informed lawmakers she had lived on both sides of the issue of capital punishment. Not only did she have a son scheduled for execution within a matter of days, but eight months earlier another one of her sons had been murdered. Her situation was definitely and most unfortunately unique and garnered the sympathy of what was almost exclusively an anti-death penalty audience, except maybe for some of the lawmakers present.
Burns was also obviously very displeased with my remarks, which had preceded hers, characterizing them in this fashion: "I listen to the minister as he talked, but it seems to be an idea of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth — How can I as a Christian ask for another person's life? I believe the Word of God when it says, 'Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy.' I also believe when it says, 'Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord.'" The end of her speech was met with considerable applause.
Although Burns' circumstances warrant understanding and sympathy, her position on the death penalty is neither Christian nor compassionate.
The primary purpose of the death-penalty is not revenge. It is retribution. In On Capital Punishment, William H. Baker notes:
Retribution is properly a satisfaction or, according to the ancient figure of justice and her scales, a restoration of a disturbed equilibrium. As such it is a proper, legitimate and moral concept. Scripture makes a clear line of distinction between this doctrine and feelings of personal hatred by forbidding such feelings and the actions to which they would lead. Capital punishment as a form of retribution is a dictate of the moral nature, which demands that there should be a just portion between the offense and the penalty.2
In fact, Jesus' quote in Matthew 5:38 of the Hebrew lex talinois, which is found in Exodus 21:23-25, was a statement of proper retribution by civil authorities. Its intention was to protect offenders from excessive penalties that didn't fit the crime. Unfortunately, however, some in Christ's day were using it as a justification for personal retaliation. In other words, when Christ spoke of "an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," He wasn't repudiating government's responsibility to maintain order, but correcting an illegitimate use of the text and advocating the way His followers should personally respond to offenses.
Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia properly makes this distinction when in God's Justice and Ours, he writes:
The death penalty is undoubtedly wrong unless one accords to the state a scope of moral action that goes beyond what is permitted to the individual. In my view, the major impetus behind the modern aversion to the death penalty is the equation of private morality with governmental morality.3
In a day when crime is largely blamed on Freudian and secularist concepts of evil, the biblical doctrine of retribution has fallen on hard times. Yet God has ordained it that when humanity chooses, for whatever reason, to violate His law, a just penalty must be exacted. A holy and just God requires that a broken order in the Universe be restored. Thus, Christ's death for the sinner was based on the need for retributive justice to satisfy the legal demands of God's law, which says: "[T]he wages of sin is death" (Romans 6:23). In fact, without the substitutionary death of Christ on the Cross there could be no forgiveness or compassion from God.
According to Christian thought, no one has the right for any reason to harbor malice, anger or bitterness toward someone on a personal level — personal vengeance is denied. This is what Christ was preaching in Matthew 5:38-45 and what Paul advocated when he wrote: "Recompense to no man evil for evil — avenge not yourselves, but rather give place to wrath: for it is written, Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord" (Romans 12:17, 19). Still Christ affirmed retributive justice by His own death on the Cross and Paul said the government bears the sword as "the minister of God" for good and is an "avenger who brings wrath upon the one who practices evil" (Romans 13:4).
For compassion and its proper application on both a personal and social level to be genuinely experienced, an understanding of the biblical doctrine of retributive justice is an absolute necessity. For instance, no person can ever experience soul salvation until he or she realizes their offense to God in the violations of His law and that such actions are deserving of eternal retribution. God has demonstrated His compassion in that the requirements of retribution are met in Christ's sacrifice on the Cross. He died and suffered in one's place. Personal peace comes only through this understanding. Moreover, social peace comes only when compassion is directed toward the victims of crime and not its perpetrators. Retribution is the primary purpose of law and not the rehabilitation of the criminal or deterrence to criminal acts. Only when this is realized can the public be properly protected by the government and society's tranquility maintained.
While anti-death penalty proponents from the faith community like Shirley Burns push for abolition and a moratorium on capital punishment in North Carolina, calling for citizens to forgive, they seem to forget that the persons with the greatest reason to forgive cannot because they've been murdered. Moreover, family members like Janice Hunter, whose 27-year-old daughter, Adrien, was brutally stabbed to death by serial killer Nathaniel White, can easily identify with her statement: "I have to go to the cemetery to see my daughter. Nathaniel White’s mother goes to jail to see him and I don't think it's fair."4 Indeed it isn't right in either the first or the latter circumstances and that's why God's Word in Genesis 9:6 declares to governments of all eras: "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed: for in the image of God made he man."
One final quote by William H. Baker best addresses the main concerns of abolitionists and moratorium advocates:
Some claim it would be better for a guilty man to go free than for an innocent man to die. Such an ethic must assume that the failure to apply justice is better than the misapplication of justice. Must we be faced with a choice of equal evil over against equal injustice? The issue is that anything less than death is not the full measure of justice; thus, anything less than death is an injustice. The question must be settled, therefore, as to whether the death penalty is just, not as to whether lack of punishment is better than punishing the wrong person. The latter question really is irrelevant.5
If the death penalty is just retribution, which it is, then it should be administered. If the death penalty can never be administered by a flawless judicial system, which it cannot, then suspending executions to improve its administration will never make it more just.
Endnotes
1. Elizabeth Dubar, "Three Executions Set for Successive Weeks," Associated Press
http://www.news-record.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070113/NEWSREC0101/70112030/-1/NEWSREC0201
2. William H. Baker, On Capital Punishment (Moody Press 1985). pgs. 81,82
3. Antonin Scalia, God's Justice and Ours
www.prodeathpenalty.com/scalia.htm
4. Geroge E. Pataki, "Death Penalty is a Deterrent," USA Today, March 1997
5. Baker, p. 121
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Responses to "A Christian Response to Death Penalty Issues"
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While Rev. Creech’s argument concerning the death penalty is the best I have heard advocating for the topic, as it deals with theology rather than merely quoting the bible (Even though Rev. Creech still does this at times to prove his points), yet I would like to propose a different answer to his theological question. Rev. Creech claims “Yet God has ordained it that when humanity chooses, for whatever reason, to violate His law, a just penalty must be exacted. A holy and just God requires that a broken order in the Universe be restored.” He deems this as retribution, which is possible because “without the substitutionary death of Christ on the Cross there could be no forgiveness or compassion from God.”
While I agree that Christ died on the Cross so that God may enact forgiveness and compassion on others, I propose that the way to restore the broken order in the Universe Rev. Creech talks about is through God’s forgiveness, not retribution. In other words, Christ sacrificed himself so that retribution is no longer necessary; God’s compassion has power over it.
One more note, I cannot disagree more when Rev. Creech claims Shirley Burns’ comments as “neither Christian nor compassionate.” Even if Rev. Creech does not agree with her words, he cannot deny that her tone and attitude of sympathy, compassion, and forgiveness exemplify the beliefs of Christianity and in God’s eyes are worthy of praise.
Comment by GeorgeMiller | January 30, 2007
For generations the moral issues of capital punishments have been debated. And I seriously doubt that in generations to come will mankind ever be in a position to unequivocally state that capital punishment is the moral equivalent to God’s vengeance. Nor will all governments accept that the only restitution for the worst crime man can commit, is itself guiltless capital punishment. I have always believed that we should instead go down the path of allowing the convicted murderer to take matters into their own hands. The current penal system as it is set up here and in most other western countries, utilizes a prison cell isolated from civilization has its form of punishment. Those states that do not permit capital punishment do not deter from this standard penal system. Murderers are sentenced to life in prison. This is a gift. Life is a gift. Quality of life for a convicted murderer is debatable. And should be debated. My position: 24-hour solitary confinement, with mechanisms in place for feeding, hygiene and sleep. Nothing else. No reading, no TV, no outside influences at all and nothing unrelated within the cell. Save, for a permanently fixed, non-removable rope terminating in a noose, dangling from the ceiling and a method (stair platform) to reach it. Few people will last very long in this situation. However, they are free to “live” as long as they want. To many people, this sounds horribly morbid. And maybe it is, but it removes the question of life or death from the state, and places it squarely in the hands of the convicted murderer themselves. Where perhaps it should be.
There are the obvious legal ramifications and hurdles, primarily constitutional laws prohibiting cruel and unusual punishment. But if capital punishment, death, can withstand this argument, certainly so should it’s counterpart, life. There is no torture here. No more so than what one would argue that being confined away from society is itself torturous. You see, those who are convicted of the crime of 1st degree murder, of which historically and currently the punishment is death, should not by any argument be allowed to use the same penal system for which other felonious actions (manslaughter, rape, robbery, etc.) are used.
Comment by Riverhound | January 31, 2007
The death penalty should be utilized.
The History Channel tells me (are they ever wrong?) the true translation of the Commandment is "Thou shalt not murder" ,as opposed to the more familiar translation "Thou shalt not kill". This would seem to clarify the difference between someone being murdered and the murderer being killed in retribution.
One of the many specious arguments raised by the anti-death penalty crowd is that the nature of death is cruel and inhumane. Now they attack death by injection, which actually involves three injections, the first of which leaves the criminal not feeling the other two. Since these are the same group of folks who belong to P.E.T.A., it was interesting to learn P.E.T.A. utilizes injection to kill animals. Any bet the animals don't get the first injection making them impervious to the feeling of the death blow?
Mike Brown
Comment by Mike Brown | February 7, 2007