Dr. Olson,

After becoming aware of your blog in the last few months, I've really enjoyed reading the posts as well as the comments from others and yourself. Obviously this discussion deals with Christian ethics. Is there a good Christian ethics resource that you would recommend from an Arminian perspective? I have one or two from a Calvinistic perspective, but I have found them difficult to agree with because of their Calvinistic theology. Thanks in advance!

One I like from an Anabaptist perspective (and thus not incompatible with Arminianism) is Kingdom Ethics: Following Jesus in Contemporary Context. Now, neither author (Glen Stassen and David Gushee) would probably admit to being "Arminian" and I don't know for sure they are Anabaptist either. But I find the book's approach to Christian ethics imbued with an Anabaptist flavor and not at all incompatible with Arminianism as I understand it.

I don't always agree with you, but I want you to know that I always appreciate your thoughtful and thought-provoking writings here on very complex and difficult issues. I always learn something. Thank you for taking the time.

Well, thank you! I've taken a beating lately, so this is nice to hear. :)

I grew up in the "Bible Belt" where capital punishment was emphasized as one of the key ethical truths that all Christians should strongly support based mainly on Romans 13: 4 "for he does not bear the sword in vain. For he is the servant of God, an avenger who carries out God’s wrath on the wrongdoer."ESV

The Reformers were extremely pro-capital punishment including for heresy.

How do you interpret Romans 13:4?

Don't you find this a difficult position to hold in Texas?!

I always heard that Genesis 9:6 was the biblical justification for capital punishment. Since it was before the Mosaic Law it didn't suffer from the same problems (i.e. We don't follow some rules because of the New Covenant).

Yeah, that's the other main verse Christians use to justify killing other humans. I didn't give it or many others because I was trying to keep my post relatively short. There are plenty of verses from the Hebrew Bible which advocate the death penalty.

And that advocate much else that most Christians (even inerrantist literalists) would not advocate for today. Stoning was the divinely commanded method of capital punishment for the Hebrews. Shall we return to stoning?

But it suffers from other problems. For example, why, then (if capital punishment for murder is God's command forever and for all) didn't God kill Cain? Instead he protected him. There are many strange things in the first eleven chapters of Genesis. I can hardly regard them as requiring us to do things today.

Well, I certainly don't interpret Romans 13:4 as meaning that Paul thought Christians should respect government when it kills innocent people. I think it was just a general statement about being subordinate to government and not rebelling against it (Zealot style). What I always wonder about is why fundamentalist churches teach Romans 13:4 as meaning submission to government and then celebrate July 4! That seems like a glaring inconsistency to me. I have found my view "difficult to hold" at times. But this isn't the only one! When I lived in a northern, mostly liberal state, I found my view of religious people as having the right to speak truth to power (government) difficult to hold. In that state religion is generally regarded as private.

As a teacher of American literature and history for many years, I found it baffling that so many Christians (especially fundamentalists and evangelicals) had a 'love' affair with the American Revolution.

Knowing more details than any normal person should be aware of;-), I recognize that the July 4th history is in many ways a direct contradiction of the literalistic reading of Romans.

American Christians should read John Wesley's view of our Revolution, or various books by dissenter Christians such as the popular novel, Twas Seeding Time by John Landis Ruth

It's tragic. But nothing new. Christians in other countries in the past have done the same with their national icons as well. Great Britain, Germany, Russia, etc.

Yes, I agree. For example, few Americans know what Americans favoring independence did to "loyalists"--those wishing not to break violently from Great Britain. Many of them lost their property and were forced to move to Canada. One has to wonder if part of the motive behind the revolution was the ability to seize property from those known to have loyalist sympathies.

Hi Roger,

I think that the TCP's approach will ultimately prove more successful - the approach of ending capital punishment through regulation rather than outright ban.

Your last paragraph (before the P.S.) reminded me of Thoreau's essay on civil disobedience. He understood that the US government - supported by his own tax dollars - was engaged in the upholding/promotion of slavery and the unjust Mexican-American War. Thoreau disrespected that arrangement so much that he went to prison rather than pay his taxes. I don't mean this a some kind of 'gotcha' question, but you wrote with such certainty and religious fervor that I'm wondering where your thinking leads you in relation to this issue and your "civil obedience" to the State.

Tim

Jesus commanded his followers to pay taxes. I will continue to pay my taxes regardless of their uses. However, I will also raise my voice against those uses I think are unjust. That's every taxpayer's right and, I would say, duty. But if the day should ever come when I would be required to participate, however, remotely, in capital punishment, I would refuse and suffer the consequences.

Roger, I find your strong stand against capital punishment but your ambivalence toward war confusing.

Capital punishment sometimes kills wrongly accused (but rarely innocent; those executed are usually criminals who have done all kinds of evil but didn't, as it turns out, commit the murder).

In contrast, ALL wars almost always kill completely innocent civilians (unless we want to hold them guilty for paying taxes to their warring government or blame them for being born in original sin, as I've heard Calvinists claim why war is justified).

Not only that, often, many soldiers don't know what's up with whether a war is justified or not. Many are more or less innocent civilians drafted into fighting a war (whether it's Germany's Great War, America's Vietnam, Iraq's "defense of the nation" from the U.S., etc.)

In contrast police action seldom ends in killing. I used to know an LA officer. In 20 years of policing, he only had to draw his gun a few times. Usually, other methods worked. And he never had to kill anybody.

There's the strength of your position. No one needs to execute even the guilty. There are other methods.

In my opinion, much of the support of capital punishment in the U.S. comes from not only a literalistic reading of the Bible but also from our self-righteousness.

Our basic difference is that I am strongly against all wars, but ambivalent on capital punishment, and you, it seems the reverse.

Sorry this comment is on the longer side, but your blog makes me work my mind:-)

I am strongly against all wars, too, but I acknowledge that some wars are necessary (neither wholly wrong or wholly right) and should always be repented of. But capital punishment is never necessary. There's the difference.

Regarding participation in an execution being a sin, does it just solely lie with people who participate at the end? Without the law that is passed that allows for capital punishment, without the prosecutors who decide who potentially dies and who doesn't for which crime ... what about them? (I am not disagreeing with you, but I was just curious about how far this goes. I do believe capital punishment is a crime against humanity and against most - if not all - religious principles.)

I recently read a feature article profiling a prosecutor who is noted for applying the death penalty and getting judges and juries to sentence defendants/convicts to death. I immediately thought "This man is sinning and his soul is in jeopardy." That's my opinion, not my judgment (because I have no authority to judge him).

I live in a country without the death penalty but sometimes I admit that I do wonder if sentencing those who have faced the death penalty in the USofA to life in prison is really very ethical. Sometimes such a sentence seems like a sentence to life time torture.
DaveW

Yes, that is a consideration. However, the solution is to fix our penal system, not kill inmates.

Roger, while I agree with your reasoning, and believe that the cross should be the lens through which we view issues like this, I was wondering if you could give some insight into the Mosaic Laws which commanded the death sentence? Would you say that the death sentence was a "tutor" (as Paul said) which taught principles of justice and retribution for sin? How would you go about explaining these principles, and how does the cross transform them?

I am unapologetically a New Testament Christian. I'm not a Marcionite because I don't consider the Old Testament uninspired or want to expel it from the Bible. However, I do not regard God's commands to Israel as binding on a modern society or as equal with Jesus' teachings in the Sermon on the Mount.

Dr. Olson,

What does being a NT Christian have to do with issues about the death penalty?

I agree we should put a moratorium on the death penalty and try to make the system work more fairly. But I don't see anywhere in Scripture that talks against it.

Maybe this is another issue but putting someone in life in prison is the exclusive right of a prosperous society. Most society's can ill afford to put someone in prison for life.

Surely you would agree that there are many things Scripture doesn't "talk against" that are nevertheless wrong. Take cloning a human being, for example. Scripture doesn't even mention it (of course). But most ethicists (including conservative, moderate and liberal Christian ones) agree that it would be wrong and that laws against it are just.

I agree with you. However, you were justifying your belief based on being a "NT Christian".

I gotcha. I guess what I'm asking is what *was* the purpose of the OT laws as given to Israel -- specifically referring to the laws concerning death penalty. I'm in agreement that we are not bound by them any longer, and that Jesus' ethic trumps those laws. I do however believe those laws were given by God for a purpose -- in your opinion, what was that purpose? Was it as Paul said in Galatians 3-4, that the Laws (specifically Death Sentence) teaching Israel something etc?

Let me recommend a book I've reviewed and recommended here before: Kent Sparks' Sacred Word, Broken Word. It's a whole different look at parts of the OT. Jesus said that Moses allowed divorce for almost any reason "because of the hardness of their hearts." I'm not sure what that meant. But, apparently, God changed his mind about some of the things he commanded and allowed in "OT times." All that is to say that I really don't know 1) If God really commanded the Israelites to stone disobedient children (for example), and 2) If he did, why. I don't lose any sleep over it at my age. :)

Thank you Roger. I will check this book out for sure. For what it's worth, I take it that the OT Laws were basic principles of justice and retribution revealed by God in order to teach that sin deserves death, and the sacrifices were given to teach that forgiveness of sin requires atonement. However, I imagine that you may have another take. In any case, the Law was fulfilled and done away in Jesus' perfect righteousness and perfect death / resurrection, which is a great thing!

The difficulty, which you are surely aware of, is that to condemn ancient Israel of being barbaric for their capital punishment also hints at ethical condemnation of God - the same God that Jesus worshiped and taught His followers to worship.

Yes, a real difficulty. God allegedly commanded ancient Israel to slaughter not only warriors but women and children. Now you've put me on the spot, so I'll put you on the spot. Can you imagine any situation in which slaughtering children--intentionally (not killing them unintentionally by bombing an enemy city)--is not barbaric? What would be barbaric in every situation and circumstance if not that?

I can not imagine such a situation where intentionally and systematically killing all men, women, and children in a particular people group would be in any ways good. However, I believe that such a situation existed and was commanded and acted upon (with notable exceptions). I would like to think that mercy for them would have played a larger role in the decision-making, but I guess my grasp on the situation is somewhat lacking. Either that or my values are somewhat differently calibrated than the values acted upon back in the days of Joshua.

In any case, it informs me about God and my ability to predict what God finds acceptable and how that matches up with what I find acceptable.

Our difference, apparently, lies in where we begin and in what light we relativize and qualify other parts of Scripture. I agree with Luther that we must observe a canon within the canon which is "What promotes Christ." I begin with Christ in the NT and then put a question mark over anything in the OT that conflicts with his life and teachings.To me the OT is a series of shadows and adumbrations of what is to come (Christ, the Messiah) and history of Israel and wisdom. But even the "wisdom" is only wisdom insofar as I can see Christ agreeing with it.

Thanks Roger,
This is a tough issue, no doubt. Aside from the innocent wrongly executed, and aside from questions about execution methodology- I've often wondered: if the executed has never been saved, are we not sending him to hell? Of course, underneath this issue is the question of the executed being 'reprobate', but even then: are we to assume we know this status?

I have mentioned this as another, specifically Christian, reason for opposing capital punishment in previous posts on the subject. Yes, I completely agree. Execution is presumptuous when it comes to cutting short a life for which God may yet have purpose.

And yet we may actually turn this the other way around. Someone who knows the hour of his death is more likely to think through the consequences. It may be the one thing that wakes him up from his wicked torpor. This is why priests and chaplains are deployed in those final hours. It actually is a gift to a convicted murderer.

OTOH, one who is living out his life in prison may be subject to death without notice, having never made his peace with God.

You miss the point. The point is that we have no right to cut short a life unnecessarily that God may yet use for his glory and others' benefit.

We have no right? From Jesus' teaching in the Sermon on the Mount and his life, I find reasons to state we have no right to make any law or seek to impose any law - for or against capital punishment. Jesus made no attempts to change any laws by the national government of his day from what is recorded in the gospel records.

The only thing I find in the Bible regarding capital punishment is from the law recorded as God giving to Moses where capital punishment was for far more sins than anyone I personally know in America would desire to have capital punishment instituted.

What I understand Jesus' life and teaching to be is not that there is a better law, or that the laws of human governments need revised. Rather, that we are to live with love for one another - a love that is other-centered and not imposing our ways upon others. Whether it is the anti-abortionists seeking to impose their morality, the environmentalists seeking to impose their morality, or the anti-capital punishment group seeking to impose their morality, when one trusts in the "law" as setting things right, we miss living in the manner Jesus lived - we trust in "law" instead of "love" - the command that Jesus did give repeatedly. I find trusting love as Jesus loved, instead of law, to go against my first response to seeing wrongs committed. Turn the other cheek? Living for a kingdom not of this world? Does that mean leaving the kingdoms of this world to everyone else, or if left to me, let it be anarchy? Jesus made no attempt at running a kingdom of this world.

I cannot imagine myself "pulling the switch" to condemn someone to death. But I know people who say they can, and the lives I observe in some of them show the love of God as much as in people who say they cannot. I read the story of Jehu in the OT of bloody massacres to destroy Ahab's descendants and Baal worshipers that concludes with God saying "you did all that was in my heart" and I am without words to explain it. But I cannot say dogmatically that the writer of these words got it wrong. If David was a "man after God's heart" then I believe a person can be for or against capital punishment and be a "person after God's heart."

I think we are looking for the "right laws" while the history of the OT and the life of Jesus show me "right laws" will never correct our problem. All God desires of us is to be people who love - and we cannot make others love, and when we impose our laws and morality we move away from love. No laws in America keep me from loving, as such I do not feel compelled to change them or disobey them because of love. If commanded by law to "pull the switch" to execute capital punishment some may do it in good conscience before God; I do not think I could. We could both be living in love.

Not trying to hijack your thread here, but your use of the word "right" sets my mind in motion, mostly with questions as Jesus' life and teaching seem so against "rights." However, this appears so impractical for how to live as a society at the same time because living in love seems to me at odds with trusting in law, yet we are a people who most of the time do not love such that without law we have chaos.

The word "right" has many meanings. Of course I was not talking about "rights" as you imply in your final paragraph. I was talking about Christians, Christ followers who are supposed to live by love, having moral justification (which is higher than legal justification if MLK was right) to execute fellow human beings made in the image of God.