Capital Punishment and Justice
D. Brent Laytham has a good article concerning capital punishment in the March 2007 edition of Covenant Companion entitled, “Truth, Passion, and the Death Penalty.” The article is challenging to both camps and in good Covenant tradition, seeks to emphasize freedom in Christ while making its argument. Laytham’s contrasting biblical justice versus Greco-Roman justice is worth the read as is his exegesis of the parable of the prodigal son. I’ll quote a bit here:
[J]ustice is not necessarily “getting what you deserve.” This idea has crept perversely into our readings of Scripture, but it is Greco-Roman rather than biblical in origin.
Get-what-you-deserve justice includes two things: a goal of orderly equilibrium where everyone is in the place they deserve, and a strategy of maintaining balance by responding in kind. This Greco-Roman idea conflicts with the Christian conviction that our very existence is an undeserved gift from our creating God. And this strategy is incompatible with our Christian conviction that salvation is available because God refused to respond in kind (Romans 6:23). If creation and redemption are just acts of a just God, then the notion of justice as “just desserts” is incompatible with our faith.
Let’s contrast the Greco-Roman and the biblical ideas of justice when it comes to punishment. The get-what-you-deserve approach to justice translates into a system of retributive punishment that tries to do two things: let the punishment fit the crime and let the punishment fix the crime. A punishment fits the crime by having severity or pain equal to the original injustice: “He got what he had coming.” And if a punishment is fitting, it fixes the crime simply by being carried out. A convict who has completed his jail term says, “I’ve paid my debt,” implying that the moral order of society has been restored and justice has been done.
But Christianity has a God-making-all-things-right approach to justice. This translates into a restorative system that tries to do three things: redress the harm done to the victims of the crime, address the alienation between victim and offender by effecting resolution or even reconciliation, and restore the offender to society so that both are healed. Both the goal and the method are thoroughly relational.
(One editorial note: in the article Laytham writes that the invading Brits oppressed the Malawi people in New Zealand. It was the Maori people, not the Malawi who received the brunt of British oppression on the islands of New Zealand. Malawi is a country in southern Africa. I’m sure this is just a typo.)
It’s a thoughtful article. My primary complaint is his division between Greco-Roman justice and biblical justice. It’s at least a very complicated comparison given the Mosaic code and Romans 13(and Matthew 15 where Jesus lists the death penalty without apology or comment as part of God’s law that the Pharisees ignore in order to favor their traditions). Even if one concludes that the best understanding of scripture and its mandates for secular goverment calls for a death penalty abolition, it’s a bit too glossy to refer to this merely as the “biblical” answer.
Moreover, I’m not sure why a Greco-Roman idea in and of itself is suspect. The Bible doesn’t have an answer for everything. Men and women can appeal to reason in addition to scripture, and have done so on either side of the death penalty debate. Back in the day the Bible wasn’t really helpful in the debates on slavery, just as it’s not terribly helpful with the debate on stem cells and cloning today.
Comment by Micah — May 17, 2007 @ 2:00 pm
Well, I think his answer is biblical, if we determine what we mean by the term biblical. Laytham has a lot of respect for the actual words of the texts, but he moves us early from taking a stance on one or two declarative texts—from either position—into a larger hermeneutic that looks at the direction the whole narrative of the Bible takes us. It is near impossible to say that the Bible is unified in its treatment of capital punishment. For every declarative statement that capital punishment is required given a certain scenario, it seems there is a story where that same scenario occurs and the death penalty does not occur and the Bible seems to say these are the right actions. Laytham’s exegesis seems correct to me.
I think contrasting Greco-Roman and biblical notions of justice is apt. The Greco-Roman notion of one getting what they deserve as determined by generally abstract criteria has been understood by many as the biblical idea of justice. The Greco-Roman notion is a reasonable idea and can clearly make ordering a society easier than a notion that is heavily relational. Laytham is correct, in my opinion, to show that the biblical notion is far more relational and is not, in fact, an antonym of mercy. I think your point that the Bible does not address all issues that press us is correct, but I fear that we can easily push the Bible to the margins when we face a new controversy like stem cells, nuclear war, etc. Yes, we can and do appeal to reason, but what happens when we encounter the fact that many of the biblical values such as sacrifice and grace are seen by society as foolishness?
Comment by Tyler Watson — May 17, 2007 @ 2:37 pm
Very encouraging article.
I agree with both of you. The Bible seems to teach—depending on historical period, literary genre, pastoral situation at hand, etc.—that we reap what we sow and that we don’t reap what we sow.
Laytham argues that a truly Christian sense of justice requires us to emphasize the latter over the former—even if it takes tremendous patience and appears foolish to the world.
Jesus chose crucifixion. It was a dramatic example of not reaping what you sow that also satisfied—in a substitutionary way—the reap what you sow ethic in order to allow the world to receive grace and escape a well deserved butt whooping. Or at least, that’s the way we western Christians normally understand atonement. The Bible has lots of images and metaphors of atonement that don’t fit this pattern.
I liked Laytham’s idea that the whole point of biblical justice is to restore relationship and community.
I really appreciated Micah’s honest take that the Bible isn’t much help with certain specific issues like slavery or other critical moral and ethical challenges.
And I agree with your take, Tyler, that a more ‘comprehensive’ hermeneutic is required that focuses on the overall and ongoing direction of biblical revelation. I think Micah is right that the bible isn’t the book you want to use to critique slavery specifically, but if you look at the comprehensive teaching of Scripture slavery’s days are obviously numbered.
Of course, the ‘comprehensive’ hermeneutic idea is only important if you believe the Bible should have some basic unity in its ethical teaching. Many believe it doesn’t have that kind of unity and couldn’t possibly have it given the variety of cultures and situations and millennia that gave birth to Scripture. I’ve gained more sympathy for that take as I get older and gain more experience around the world.
Comment by Tom Pratt — May 17, 2007 @ 7:35 pm