Dr Greg Bahnsen - Political Ethics: Enforcement of Morals - Capital Punishment (Part 20)

Finally, the question of capital punishment. We have looked at the notion of separation of church and state, the question of whether the state has the right to enforce morality, and the question of whether the state in particular should enforce a welfare morality, morality of benevolence, redistribution of wealth. And the last particular issue that I'm going to raise raised is whether the state has the right to take someone's life to punish to the point of death in at least certain cases. And in order to get into this subject, we need to first of all define legal punishment. I'm going to first define legal punishment and then I'm going to point out that legal punishment must be justified in some way. There must be a justification for legal punishment. Well, what do we mean by legal punishment? Three points to be made. Motives and character are indifferent to legal guilt and criminal liability. Even though motives and character are not indifferent to morality, more broadly, they are indifferent to legal guilt. The state functions to punish breaches of public rules and does not consider the unworthy or the laudable motives of obedience to or disobedience. If somebody appears before a judge and says, well, I disobeyed the law, but I did it for a good reason, that's irrelevant. And if somebody appears before the judge and says, well, I haven't broken any law, but I had the wrong motive, that's also irrelevant. So motives and character are indifferent to legal guilt. Secondly, the design of a legal system is to guide the external conduct and interpersonal relations of the citizens by laying down public rules which guard rights and then attaching penal sanctions to those public rules so that they don't simply amount to advice or exhortation. So motives are indifferent to legal guilt. Secondly, the design of a legal system is to guide external conduct and to attach penal sanctions to the rules that guide that conduct. And then thirdly, I'd like to define punishment or to give the conditions of punishment. Punishment in the nature of the case must be very unpleasant in itself, obviously must be very unpleasant, but it must be very unpleasant in itself. It's not just the accidental accompaniment of something. When you go to the dentist and the dentist drill hurts you, that may be very unpleasant, but that doesn't make it punishment. It's not just the accidental accompaniment of the pain with this or the drill with the dentist and so forth. Punishment must be unpleasant in itself. It must be so unpleasant that it's not something which people will seek either. For instance, tramps might seek to be locked up in the jail on a cold winter night. That's not punishment. When it's something that people actually will seek out. Moreover, it must be so unpleasant that people won't take a calculated risk with respect to it. So if we say, well, if you kill somebody, we'll charge you $35. Somebody might say, well, you know, the chances of my being caught and having. I could pay $35. So that's a calculated risk, but I'll go ahead and do it. Obviously, it's got to be so unpleasant. People are not going to risk it. Okay, so it's got unpleasant in itself. Secondly, punishment must be deliberately and personally imposed. It's not just a natural consequence. A person may get drunk and have a hangover. But the hangover is not punishment in any legal way for being drunk. It must be personally imposed and deliberately imposed. Thirdly, legal punishment must be very unpleasant in itself, deliberately and personally imposed. And because of an offense that has been committed, it is not something that is voluntarily or innocently assumed. When a boxer gets in the ring, we might say, boy, he's taking punishment tonight in that ring. Well, that's speaking metaphorically, because in the real sense, punishment has to be because of an offense that is committed and not something that somebody just willingly undertakes, like being willing to go into the. Into the boxing ring. And lastly, punishment must be imposed by an authorized agent of that system of free established rules. Must be imposed by an authorized agent of the state. It's not imposed ex post facto. You know, after a law is passed and the law has been passed after the crime has been committed. And it can't be performed by a lynch mob, it must be performed by the authorized agents of the state. So let's just make sure we understand what we mean by punishment. Legal punishment makes motive and character indifferent. Its design is to guide external conduct, to lay down public rules attached with penal sanctions. And punishment has got to be, as I said, very unpleasant in itself. Deliberately and personally imposed because of an offense committed and done so by an agent that is authorized by the system of free established rules. That's what I mean by the concept of legal punishment. And my premise right now is that legal punishment, as I've defined it, must have some moral justification. You've got to offer a justification, a warrant for such legal punishment. Because if you don't have moral justification, then you can't distinguish crime from punishment, as I suggested earlier. All right? If the state takes somebody's life, we call it punishment execution. If I individually take somebody's life, we call it murder, a crime. Now, what's the difference between my taking somebody's life and the state taking somebody's life. What's the difference between crime and punishment if there are no moral standards that call for distinction between crime and punishment? It's just that one group does it rather than another group. It's the same thing. So if you don't have moral justification for legal punishment, punishment is no different than the crime that's being punished. And if you don't have moral justification for legal punishment, then justice becomes merely a euphemism for what serves the stronger. Justice is just a euphemistic word for saying, well, the stronger in our society have rules protecting them. In this way, justice is just a mythological self serving plea on the part of the weaker. Give us justice because we don't like the way we are being treated. Moreover, if legal punishment cannot be justified, then we don't need judges and lawyers because they are people who simply are making money playing at a game. If there's no legal justification, if there's no justification for legal punishment, then what we need are revolutionary anarchists who will liberate us from the inhumanity of one group. The stronger against the other group, the weaker. Since we don't accept these consequences, that there's no distinction between crime and punishment, we don't need judges. Justice is just a euphemism. Then all of us, it seems to.

Me, assume that there is some moral.

Warrant and justification for legal punishment for the state punishing people. Well, how would you justify a penal system of inflicting pain on people or inflicting deprivation on them? How would you go about justifying it? Well, there are two general possibilities that have been offered in the history of penal theorizing. The first is called the utilitarian approach to punishment, and the second is called the retributivist approach to punishment. The utilitarian approach says that punishment is justified only when it has beneficial consequences outweighing the intrinsic evil of inflicting suffering on human beings. That is to say, punishment is justified because we are future looking, we're looking to certain consequences. We want to accomplish certain goals that will outweigh the evil of inflicting this punishment. And the goals that the utilitarian theories of punishment set for themselves are either reforming the criminal. So that's the reformational view of punishment, deterring others from similar offenses, the deterrence view of punishment, or preventing this person's further offenses. That's the quarantine theory of punishment, where we lock him up to protect society from him. So the utilitarian approach looks for the beneficial consequent punishment is future looking, looking to the reform of the criminal, the deterrence of others, or the prevention of the criminal from doing further acts in society. It should be pointed out as an aside that few people today have delusions about the reformational and deterrence theories of punishment anymore. I mean, while some pop culture legislators may talk that way and it may be cute for college debate, the fact of the matter is those people who are seriously studying the issue statistically, empirically have no delusions that we don't reform criminals and we don't deter other acts. The only real, I mean in practice, utilitarian theory of punishment being followed today is the protection theory that we're just quarantining people from hurting other people. Well, how can we criticize the utilitarian approach to punishment? Well, my main criticism is that it justifies punishing the innocent. All utilitarian theories of punishment can justify punishing those who are innocent. Let me give you some examples. On the reformation view of punishment, we want to punish in order to reform the criminal. Well, it seems that we could reform the criminal even before he commits acts. If we see a tendency in individual to be a criminal sort, to be a thief or something, maybe we should punish him before he commits the act and reform him in that way rather than waiting until after he's committed the act. But that's to say that you can reform an innocent man, you can punish an innocent man, you can reform somebody before he's even committed an act making him guilty. Or on the deterrent's view of punishment, where you punish somebody to deter others, you could punish an innocent man who is made to look guilty if it would serve as a useful warning to your society. You can take an innocent man and say, here's the man who's been raping all these women at night. We're going to string him up and that'll be a warning to all of you. That might even deter the real criminal from continuing his act. So on the deterrence view, you could be warranted in punishing the innocent. And on the prevention view of punishment, if your goal is just to prevent a man from committing crimes, then one way to accomplish that is to take his wife or his children and to torture them and tell him that if he doesn't stop going about raiding the neighborhood, that you're going to continue torturing his family. And that might even be more effective than torturing him. He may be able to put up with the torture himself, but he won't put up with the torture, torture of his loved ones. And so it turns out that the utilitarian theories of punishment allow, in one form or another, allow for the punishment of the innocent. And that's certainly a prima facie plea against any theory if it allows for punishing the innocent. Secondly, I point out that the utilitarian approach to punishment is not really punishment, but is social hygiene, especially the reformation view. And that social hygiene is a goal for our legislators and judges undermines a free society of law. Social hygiene allows for doing things in order to accomplish certain consequences in your society, rather than punishing on the basis of some past defense. You see, the utilitarian view overlooks the fact that punishment is given because of past offenses and is not given in order to future results. It forgets that character and motives are to be irrelevant to public law. Moreover, all of us need reformation of some sort, don't we? If you hold to the reforming view of punishment, then it seems that all of us should be punished. Moreover, as future oriented, the reformation view of punishment calls for social engineers rather than for judges. This is supposedly the humanitarian theory of punishment, where you take people and reform them according to the dictates of the sociologist and the psychologist in your society. Well, I would hold that this allegedly humanitarian theory, theory of punishment could presumably turn society over to a team of psychological manipulators. And then anyone that they think is information can be taken off against his will, for no breach of law whatsoever, for an indeterminable amount of time under unguarded conditions, and then be reformed. That means formed over again according to what the manipulators want. In that case, we would cease being a society of law and we would become a society of the elite, those who are in the know and have the advantage of compulsive power. Psychologists would reform us according to some social pattern. Moreover, I think the utilitarian theory of punishment could justify cruel and unusual punishment, as long as cruel and unusual punishment would accomplish the goals of reformation, deterrence or prevention. And finally, the utilitarian view is unworkable because it would require omniscience about future causal effects, the psychosocial results of our actions.

And since nobody can really calculate all.

The effects of punishing this criminal in this way, it would be impossible to know on the utilitarian ground what to do with criminals and which people should be punished at all. Well, if the utilitarian view of punishment hasn't worked, then we can look at the retributivist view. The retributivist view of punishment lays stress on the guilt of the offender. And the desert that he is getting as a result of his guilt. The retributiveist view looks back to the crime in order to justify punishment. Rather than looking ahead to the results of punishment, the utilitarian looks ahead to consequences. The retributiveist looks back to the guilt that comes because a crime has been committed. Consequences are irrelevant. It's only desert that comes into question here. A man deserves to be punished because of something, not in order to accomplish something. Now, on this view, view, the intrinsic value of punishment is intuitively appreciated. It sees that the balance of the moral order can only be restored if.

Criminals are made to suffer for their misdeeds.

And so the retributiveist says that it's necessary to punish people in order to annul the wrong that has been done by the criminal. It's necessary to punish in order to maintain a distribution of justice. Well, I have a few criticisms of the retributiveist as well. The retributivist, in the long run, denies the necessity of justifying punishment. He may speak of rectifying the moral order, putting things back in balance, following justice and all that, but that's just to say that on his view, justice calls for punishing people. Other people think justice does not call for that, that the moral order cannot metaphorically be rebalanced. And therefore, by speaking in these vague metaphors, the retributiveist doesn't offer a genuine philosophical justification for his punishment at all. And in some cases, this is my second criticism. Many retributiveist justify punishment in a way that turns out to be a veiled reference to the beneficial results of punishment, that we have to make sure there's a distribution of justice, that people will respect the law, and so forth. And so when the retributivist is not in a veiled way denying the necessity of justifying punishment, he is sometimes using utilitarian grounds to justify it, and therefore giving up the heart of his theory. And so my conclusion is that the only way you can justify punishment is on a theonomic view of punishment, that if you look at the philosophy of punishment, if you look at penology as a separate subject for discussion, you have to hold that it calls for moral justification. And yet neither the utilitarian nor the retributivist can offer it. Only the theonomic view of punishment can offer a justification for punishment. To be sure, punishment can have a deterrence value, it can have a reforming value, it can even have a protecting value. But none of these values alone can be the Principle of punishment. According to the theonomist, the necessary component for all of those cases, unless they're going to lead to the punishment of the innocent, is the concept of retribution. However, secular and autonomous retributiveist theories either deny the necessity of justifying punishment or they reduce to a disguised utilitarianism. And so I would maintain that a retributiveist theory of punishment can be salvaged only by appealing to the judge of all the earth. We must have a religious authority for engaging in punishment. There's a second way in which you can see the need for a religious authority if you're going to be a retributivist. And that has to do with how you decide on the severity of punishment. How do you make sure that the punishment is proportioned to the degree of the offense? How can you be confident that the way you're punishing is neither too lenient nor too harsh? And for the nature of the crime itself, Both retributiveist and utilitarian theories agree that punishment needs to be appropriate to the crime. But how do you assess what is appropriate? How do you assess desert? What does a traffic fine call for? What does rape call for? How do you know? Is rape more important or less important than a traffic fine? How do you assess these things deserved? And what is it that makes one offense more serious than another offense? How do you determine what kinds of punishment are commensurate with the crime in question? How do you know that cutting off toes is cruel and unusual, whereas execution is not? How do you assess dessert? What makes one offense more serious than another? And how do you determine what kinds of points punishments are commensurate with the crime in question? It seems to me that in order to be just, in order to be just, man is forced to rely on God's word. The Judge of all the earth will certainly deal justly. Genesis 18:25 and Deuteronomy 32:4, Genesis 18. You recall that Abraham is asking the question, will God punish the people in Sodom if there are 20 righteous people, or 10 righteous people, or even 5 righteous people? And the declaration that is given here, that the Judge of all the earth can be counted upon to do justly. And that's repeated in Deuteronomy 32:4. We can count on God to give us the proper punishment and to mete out what justice demands. So to this point, I've argued in an apologetical way that legal punishment, as that's been defined legal punishment, must be morally justified. And therefore, since legal punishment must be morally justified if it's going to be distinguished from crime itself. Therefore, the issues of penology cannot be resolved at the most fundamental level of our thought when without heeding the revealed word of God, that to talk about punishment in the state, one must go to the Word of God. So I've defined legal punishment. First of all, I've argued that it must be justified. And now I'm saying it must be justified according to the word of God. And let's see what that justification is in the Word of God. First of all, because judges and rules.

Must not pervert justice. Excuse me.

Because judges and rulers that must be.

Must not pervert justice.

They must obey God's law. The Bible says justice must be maintained. Proverbs 20:4. He who says to the wicked, you are righteous, peoples will curse him, nations will abhor him. But to those who rebuke the wicked will be delight, and a good blessing will come upon them. Isaiah 5:20. Woe to those who call evil good.

And good evil, who substitute darkness for.

Light and light for darkness. In Proverbs 21:15, the execution of justice is joy for the righteous, but is terror to the workers of iniquity. So the Bible says justice must be maintained, and that in turn implies that rulers must submit to God's law. Proverbs 28:40. Those who forsake the law praise the wicked, but those who keep the law strive with them. You must not praise the wicked if you're going to do justly.

And it's those who submit to the.

Law who will not praise the wicked. Proverbs 28:5 goes on. The king gives stability to the land by justice. But evil men do not understand justice. Those who seek the Lord understand all things. That is to say, those who go of the law of God will understand justice, and therefore will not condone the wicked, but will rather be a terror to the wicked and a blessing to the righteous. So judges and rulers must not pervert justice. And if they must not pervert justice, they must obey God's law.

Secondly, let me say that this requires.

Observing and enforcing certain sanctions. If rulers must rule according according to God's law, they must have certain sanctions that follow them. If you don't have sanctions following them, then the infraction of the law doesn't amount to anything. It's not enforced, and you have mere advice being given to people. A law is a genuine civil law only when it's backed up with the power of coercion. Now, God's word tells us that there's a dual Sanction against sins. In some cases, there's a sanction that deals with personal holiness. That is the sanction God will bring on the day of judgment, eternal punishment. And then there's a social sanction that protects justice in society. That means we have to distinguish between sin and crime. There's a difference between what God punishes only in terms of eternal life or eternal damnation, and what God punishes at that point. And the state in time, in history is to punish as well. Now, the principle for all scriptural penology, for all scriptural penology, is retribution and equity. Penalties reflect the character of God as a just God. God's Word sets forth, then, a retributive penal system. Where appropriate, punishment punishments are prescribed according to what crimes deserved punishments are weighed according to the gravity of the offense. Law violators are punished because they are guilty and they have specifiable penalties inflicted on them because they deserve to have that other form of punishment brought against them. In short, criminals on the biblical system undergo their just deserts now before an.

Unbelieving world with its autonomous and unjust standards for society.

The Christian can then set forth without embarrassment a system of divinely sanctioned justice. If you just look at what our system can offer, there should be no embarrassment in our setting forth the penal sanctions of God's word. The world doesn't have anything to compare to it.

Now.

Retribution is the foundation of God's justice. And we see that, for instance, in the substitutionary atonement of Christ, salvation requires that righteousness and peace kiss each other. Psalm 89, 9, 10. And therefore in Galatians 3 we read that Christ took the curse of the law upon himself, and Colossians 2 says thereby canceled the certificate of debt that was against us. Contrary to modern theologians who either deny the need for propitiation of God's wrath or who propound a moral influence view of the atonement, Christ died as a substitute. Dealing with the retributive justice of God, I think it should be pointed out. It's interesting that Christians who support the abolition of capital punishment in favor of a rehabilitation theory of penology will often base their case on the view that our doctrine of God's retributive justice is wrong. They say, by contrast, that God's gracious and renewing power is the theological context for answering questions about justice. Capital punishment, they hold, denies the possibility of the individual's restoration and renewal. But the power of of God's grace places no one beyond this possibility, and therefore we can't hold to capital punishment. But you See, what's wrong here is that these modern theologians have a defective view of God's wrath and a defective view of the substitutionary atonement. So it's no surprise that modernist Christian theologians are some of the biggest proponents of the abolition of capital punishment. And not only is retribution the foundation of Christ's substitutionary atonement, but the Bible says that the penalties that are detailed in God's law, even the civil penalties, reflect the equity of God. He always delivers an appropriate punishment from the nature of the offense. Social penalties in the Old Testament were.

Based on the principle of an eye.

For an eye and a tooth for a a tooth. They were not arbitrary. The penalty matched the crime.

They were just as appropriate with respect.

To their sphere of reference, society, as God's eternal punishment is appropriate with respect to its sphere of authority. And so the Old Testament taught that a man is punished according to his fault. Deuteronomy 25:2.

And the standard Exodus 20:1 is an.

Eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Which by the way, stands in contrast to all the cultures around Old Testament Israel that punished in a very heinous way and arbitrarily punished, prescribing much more than a crime deserved in many cases, or much less than what an offense deserved. The Bible tells us in Hebrews 2, verse 2, that the word spoken through angels proved unalterable, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense. Now, the law, excuse me, the word spoken through angels is the law. According to Acts 7:53, the angels were somehow instrumental in Moses receiving of the law. And here Hebrews tells us that that law is unalterable. You cannot change the law. Moreover, every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense. The foundational truth that God is. What is foundational to the argument that God is just in his eternal damnation of apostates is that God's justice is obvious in the punishments he's laid down for society. This is an authortiori argument from the lesser to the greater. If you know God is just in the penal sanctions he gave society, then you know he'll be just when it comes to eternal retribution. And that's why capital offenses in the Bible are designated as worthy of death. You find that language in Deuteronomy 21:22, Romans 1:32 and Acts 25:11. Capital crimes are those which are worthy of death. When death is prescribed, it's because that's what the crime deserves. So what I said thus far in terms of the biblical view of penology is that judges and rulers must not pervert justice, and thus they have to obey God's law. This requires enforcing certain sanctions. And the principle of scriptural penology is retribution and equity. I would add now fourthly, that civil sanctions, the civil sanctions of God's law are necessary. They must be imposed. They are not a matter of discretion or choice. Proverbs 11:21. Assuredly, the evil man will not go unpunished. Deuteronomy 13:11. You must punish in order that you purge the evil from among you.

Deuteronomy 19:21.

There can be no mercy or pity. Thus you shall not show pity. Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. If you showed pity to certain criminals, then you would be showing partiality, respect of persons. Some people would get off because they have something to offer to the judge, or they are a friend, or they're the right racial origin, or they have money, or they give a good act that their hearts have been changed. That would be discrimination and that would provide justice. Moreover, the Bible tells us, if you look at Leviticus 6 and Numbers 5.

That even when a criminal offered sacrifice.

And atonement for his sin, the civil punishment could not be averted. The crime had to be punished even when the man could offer sacrifice for the sake of his.

But you see, what's wrong here is that these modern theologians have a defective view of God's wrath and a defective view of the substitutionary atonement. So it's no surprise that modernist Christian theologians are some of the biggest proponents of the abolition of capital punishment. And not only is retribution the foundation of Christ's substitutionary atonement, but the Bible says that the penalties that are detailed in God's law, even the civil pillars, penalties, reflect the equity of God. He always delivers an appropriate punishment for the nature of the offense. Social penalties in the Old Testament were based on the principle of an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

They were not arbitrary.

The penalty matched the crime. They were just as appropriate with respect to their sphere of reference, society, as God's eternal punishment is appropriate with respect to its sphere of authority. And so the Old Testament taught that a man is punished according to his fault. Deuteronomy 25:2. And the standard Exodus 20:1 is an.

Eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

Which by the way, stands in contrast to all the cultures around Old Testament Israel that punished in a very heinous way and arbitrarily Punished prescribing much more than a crime. Crime deserved in many cases are much less than what an offense deserved. The Bible tells us in Hebrews 2. 2 that the word spoken through angels proved unalterable, and every transgression of disobedience received a just recompense. Now, the law, excuse me, the word spoken through angels is the law. According to Acts 753, the angels were somehow instrumental in Moses receiving of the law. And here Hebrews tells us that that law is unalterable. You cannot change the law. Moreover, every transgression and disobedience received a just recompense. The foundational truth that God is what is foundational to the argument that God is just is in his eternal damnation of apostates is that God's justice is obvious in the punishments he's laid down for society. This is an a fortiori argument from the lesser to the greater. If you know God is just in the penal sanctions he gave for society, then you know he'll be just when it comes to eternal retribution. And that's why capital offenses in the Bible are designated as worthy of just death. You find that language in Deuteronomy 21:22, Romans 1:32 and Acts 25:11. Capital crimes are those which are worthy of death when death is prescribed. It's because that's what the crime deserves. So what I said thus far in terms of a biblical view of penology is that judges and rulers must not pervert justice, and thus they have to obey God's law. This requires enforcing certain sanctions, and the principle of scriptural penology is retribution and equity. I would add now fourthly, that civil sanctions, the civil sanctions of God's law are necessary. They must be imposed. They are not a matter of discretion or choice. Proverbs 11:21. Assuredly, the evil man will not go unpunished. Deuteronomy 13:11. You must punish in order that you purge the evil from among you. Deuteronomy 19:21. There can be no mercy or pity. Thus you shall not show pity. Life for life, eye for eye, tooth for tooth, hand for hand, foot for foot. If you showed pity to certain criminals, then you would be showing partiality, respect of persons. Some people would get off because they have something to offer to the judge, or they are a friend, or they're.

The right racial origin, or they have.

Money, or they give a good act that their hearts have been changed. That would be discrimination and that would pervert justice. Moreover, the Bible tells us, if you look at Leviticus 6 and Numbers 5 that even when a criminal offered sacrifice in atonement for his sin, the civil punishment could not be averted. The crime had to be punished even when the man could offer sacrifice for the sake of his sin before God. As Deuteronomy 24:16 says, Everyone shall be put to death for his own sin. That cannot apply to eternal punishment. Obviously, we're not going to be put to death eternally for our sins. So Deuteronomy 24:16 applies to civil punishments. Everyone must die for his crimes.

Martin Luther put it very well when.

He said, if God will have wrath, what business do you, the magistrate, have being merciful? What a fine mercy to me it would be to have mercy on the.

Thief and murderer and let him kill.

Abuse, and rob me. You see, when the magistrate shows mercy, he's not showing mercy to the person who was afflicted, to the person who was offended. He's not showing mercy to the person who was taken advantage of. He's showing mercy to the person who was taking advantage of others. It's not right to show mercy to the guilty and thereby allow him to have punished and abused the innocent. Okay, so we've said civil sanctions must be imposed, and the Bible says these sanctions must be imposed by man who has been ordained by God for this purpose. It's clear in the New Testament that civil punishment is still needed. In fact, this is the proper use of God's law. First Timothy 1, 8:10 says, we know that the law is good if one uses it lawfully, realizing that the law was not enacted for a righteous man, but for those who are lawless and rebellious, for the ungodly and sinners, for the unholy and profane, for those who kill their fathers or mothers, for murderers and fornicators and homosexuals and kidnappers and liars and perjurers, and whatever else is contrary to sound teaching. The law was given, was enacted to show how the state could protect itself against these criminals that have been mentioned. Paul is dealing with the law's external function of restraint, and he lists only those laws of which human law can take cognizance and be used against criminal offenders. So he's dealing here with the state's compulsion. He's giving, if you will, some kind of guidance to the sorts of things Romans 13 would be dealing with. Matthew Henry says that in this passage in First Timothy we find an institution of a power in the civil magistrate to make laws against such notorious sinners as are specified and to see those laws put into execution. Now, Genesis 9, 6. To go to another passage explains why the death penalty must be humanly inflicted. There we read, if man sheds another man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed. The phrase there by man answers a very important question about whether man is justified in killing another man or whether God has reserved that punishment for himself. Von Rod says about this passage, God himself will not avenge murder, but he empowers man to do it. The reason the text says by man it shall be done is because the point is being stressed that God will not be the avenger. Man will be the avenger in the place of God. And then the phrase is added, for in the image of God he made man. And I take that to explain not why murder is wrong, but why men will be involved in executing murderers. That explains why man is justified in.

Taking the life of another man.

Romans 13:4, moreover, explains that penal sanctions are to be imposed by authorities who are ordained by God for that purpose. The civil magistrate is a minister of God, ordained by God and obviously then responsible to God. He is said to be an avenger who brings wrath, which is to say he executes God's wrath and vengeance on the offenders. And offenders are called those who practice evil. Verse 10 in Romans 13 indicates that those who practice evil violate the summary dictate of love, which itself summarizes all of God's law. We know from the New Testament that that the man of lawlessness is a political ruler. He's called the Beast in Revelation. And what is wrong with this political ruler? He is lawless. He doesn't follow the law of God. Moreover, Revelation 13 says he substitutes his law for God's law. God's law was to be written on the forehead and on the hand. But in Revelation 13, the beast wants his name written on the forehead and on the hand. And so the New Testament teaches that the magistrate must follow the law of God in bringing wrath upon offenders. And he must do this, According to Romans 13, even to the point of death, because capital punishment is included when he says. When Paul says the magistrate bears not the sword in vain, the sword being the symbol of punishment to the point of death. Okay, let's review what we have said here. We've been building from an apologetical platform and then added an exegetical extension of it to show how the Bible defines punishment. We first began with the notion of legal punishment and gave definition to it. I then argued that legal punishment has to have some philosophical or moral justification. And I concluded that that justification can only be given on a theonomic basis that retribution can be accounted for only on the basis of what God teaches and proportions for the proper punishment of criminals. And therefore legal punishment must be justified. And thirdly, it must be justified according to the word of God. Judges must not pervert justice, and so they must obey God's law. Obeying God's law requires enforcing certain sanctions. The principle of scriptural penology and sanctions is retribution and equity. We see that in the substitutionary atonement of Christ and the teaching of Scripture itself about an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, and so forth, these civil sanctions of retribution are necessary. They must be imposed, the Bible says, without mercy, and they must be imposed by man because he's been ordained as the image of God to use these punishments for the protection of society, to avenge God's wrath against the evildoers. And therefore I'm going now to my next major section of this lecture. Therefore, all of the penal sanctions of the Old Testament are binding today. We know that all of the sanctions are binding today because Matthew 5 tells us that not the least commandment can be violated or taught against if we're going to avoid demotion in the kingdom of God. The Bible teaches the continuity of Old Testament, with the New Testament saying that every jot and tittle is binding until heaven and earth pass away. Moreover, there's a uniform doctrine of the civil magistrate in the Old and in the New Testaments, as I've already pointed out to you in previous lectures. So let's review a few things here. There is no justification for punishment without the standard of God's law. God's law prohibits subtracting anything from his law without his warrant. Deuteronomy 4. 2, you shall not subtract from God's law. Thirdly, the magistrate's requirement is to do justice and to avenge God's wrath. Moreover, Hebrews 2 tells us every transgression received a just recompense in the unalterable law of God. First Timothy 1 says that the law law can be used in a judicial way for restraining crime in society. Remember the examples of Sodom of Nineveh of the Canaanite tribes, how God used his law to punish them? Remember Ezra's praise of Artaxerxes for decreeing that God's law should be enforced in all the region beyond the river, even to the point of death.

Remember Deuteronomy 4.

8. What great nation is there that has statutes and judgments as righteous as this whole law which I am setting before you? So, as Moses had said in verse six, this Is your wisdom and understanding in the sight of the peoples who will hear these statutes, all these statutes, and say, surely this great nation is a wise and understanding people? Well, there's further New Testament verification for these inferences that I've drawn that the penal sanctions of the Old Testament are bound. Acts 25:7 11 is just such a justification.

It seems to me Paul is being.

Held in Caesarea and is being tried by the Roman governor Festus here in Acts 25. And I think we should read his words, Acts 25:7 11. And when he was come, the Jews who came down from Jerusalem stood right round about and laid many and grievous complaints against Paul, which they could not prove, while he answered for himself, neither against the law of the Jews, neither against the temple, nor yet against Caesar have I offended in anything at all. But Festus, willing to do the Jews a favor, answered Paul and said, will you go to Jerusalem and there be judged of these things before me? Then Paul said, I stand at Caesar's judgment seat, where I ought to be be judged to the Jews. Have I done no wrong, as you very well know. But if I am an offender, or have committed anything worthy of death, I refuse not to die. But if there be none of these things of which they accuse but if there be none of these things of which these accuse me, no man may deliver me unto them. I appeal unto Caesar. Paul protested that he had committed not no offense against the law of the Jews in verse 8. And then he spoke in verse 11 of none of those things of which these men accuse me. The accusation was a plural accusation of things against the law of the Jews. And Paul's attitude in verse 11 was, if I am a wrongdoer and have committed anything worthy of death, that is as defined by the law of the Jews, anything worthy of death, I refuse not to die. Paul's attitude was that must be carried out. If it's true, the law of the Jews must be enforced on me, I refuse not to die. And then of course, there are examples in Scripture itself, in the case of Christ or Paul, where the Old Testament penal sanctions are spoken favorably of Mark 7:10. Jesus speaks favorably of capital punishment for those who do not honor their father or their mother. In Romans 1:32, they know the ordinance of God, the homosexuals, that those who commit such things are worthy of death. Matthew 5:21 22 speaks of the intensification of law, that one who is guilty of murder is liable to the court. In Luke 19:9, 10 we see that Zacchaeus is willing to make restitution for anything he has defrauded from others. In Hebrews 10:28 we see that the setting aside of the Mosaic law brings death without mercy at the testimony of two witnesses. So we can come to something of a sub conclusion here, an application of all that's gone before. I've said legal punishment must be justified according to the word of God, and therefore all of the penal sanctions of the Old Testament are binding today.

Let me conclude by using the words of Proverbs here.

Proverbs 16:12 it is an abomination for kings to commit wickedness for a throne is established on righteousness. In Proverbs 14:34 righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any people. Proverbs 10:30 the righteous will never be shaken, but the wicked will not dwell in the land. And Proverbs 21:15 for the execution of justice is terror to the workers of iniquity. One more time it is an abomination for kings to commit wickedness for a throne is established on righteousness. Righteousness exalts a nation, but sin is a disgrace to any the righteous will never, never be shaken, but the wicked.

Will not dwell in the land, for.

The execution of justice is terror to the workers of iniquity. Proverbs 22 the terror of a king is like the growling of a lion. He who provokes him to anger forfeits his own life. Verse 8 says, A king who sits on the throne of justice disperses all evil with his eyes. And then finally, verse 26 indeed a wise king winnows the wicked and drives the thrill over them. So we've argued apologetically and now exegetically and theologically that capital punishment is warranted, that there must be capital punishment for the sake of justice in our social order. Now I'd like to consider a few objections before we end this lecture to theonomic penology. A few objections. First of all, there are those who would like to restrict capital punishment to.

Just one crime, the one crime of murder.

And they would like to restrict capital punishment to murder on the basis of the Noah covenant of Genesis 9:6. For in Genesis 9 it said, those who shed a man's blood, by man shall their blood be shed. So murder is being dealt with in Genesis 9.

And there are people who think that.

Everybody is under the Noahic covenant, all of creation, and so everybody must honor capital punishment for murder, but not everybody's under the Mosaic covenant. And therefore we don't have to honor the Mosaic law with its punishment for other crimes? Well, first of all, where do covenant theologians in particular, where does anybody, but especially covenant theologians, where do they derive the right to discriminate as to which of God's covenants they will follow and which they will ignore? Covenant theology teaches all these covenants are.

Part of an organic whole.

They flow together, and therefore you can't discriminate among them. Choosing one and rejecting others. Deuteronomy 4. 2 and Matthew 4. 4 and Matthew 5, 17, 20 and Romans 1:3 all prohibit subtracting things from the law. The law judges all men, and it's all of the law that judges them. Moreover, this view does not really prove enough, for it says that the civil magistrate is guided only by the dictates of Genesis 9, apparently. But when Romans 13 was written, Paul mentioned the right of taxation as belonging to the government. That's not mentioned in Genesis 9. So Paul is clearly not restricting his view of civil government to what is taught in Genesis 9. Moreover, in Genesis 9, no distinction is made between murder and other forms of homicide like manslaughter. People who want the state to execute people today for murder do want to distinguish between accidental and premeditated murder. And yet that is not a distinction you'll find in Genesis 9. That distinction comes in the Mosaic law. So if they're throwing the most Mosaic law out and keeping only Genesis 9, they have not proven enough. But it seems to me that if Genesis 9 is the standard for their ethic, they've really proven far too much as well, because Genesis 9 also teaches that we may not eat any creature with its life that is its blood. And that would mean that the state must have transferred to the statute but a prohibition of the eating of life with its blood. And that seems to me to go.

Far beyond what modern defenders of capital punishment want.

And therefore we can't really hold to this kind of reasoning. From Genesis 9, it's also been reasoned that murder is somehow relevantly unique, so that it alone calls for capital punishment in all ages, but other crimes do not. But I don't see that Genesis 9 teaches us that. It doesn't teach us that murder is somehow in a special class. If anything, murder is just seen there.

As the paradigm of why any law.

From God would call for capital punishment, because it is something that violates the image of God or something that's contrary to righteousness in a new society. Murder is not the only irremediable sin either. Rape, which removes a person's virginity, the destruction of rare antiques, any number of other crimes and sins are Irremediable as well. And so I don't see that there's any good exegetical or common sense argument that says that murder is somehow a unique class and only it calls for capital punishment. And therefore a smorgasbord approach to the Mosaic civilization. Law is illegitimate. We must recognize the validity of all capital crimes in the law of God or none of them, because the law of God is a seamless garment. When people say that they endorse capital punishment for murder, you can ask them on what grounds they do so. If they go to Romans 13 or any new Testament passage, then you can say, but you'll notice there that doesn't discriminate murder out from the other cross crimes of the Old Testament. So if Romans 13 justifies capital punishment today, it justifies capital punishment for all the crimes in the Old Testament, not just for one, because one is not singled out. And there are people who say, since we can't distinguish between capital punishment for.

Murder or capital punishment for rape, and we don't want capital punishment for all.

These crimes only for murder, therefore we have to be against capital punishment in general. That is, there are those who argue against theonomy trying to discriminate, saying, some crimes, one in particular, call for capital punishment, but the others no longer do. But then there's another group of people that say, none of the crimes of the Old Testament call for capital punishment today. There should be a general abrogation of capital punishment. First, there are those who would like to generalize from silence. People who go to the woman taken in adultery pericope and say, Jesus there doesn't call for her execution, that Paul doesn't call for execution of the incestuous fornicator in 1st Corinthians 5. That Jesus doesn't call for execution for adulterers when he says that divorce is the proper response, and that therefore this silence justifies the abrogation of capital punishment. But there are real problems with this. In the first place, it's always fallacious to our argue from silence. God says, you cannot, on the basis of silence, take away from his law. Only God can abrogate something in his law. And there are plenty of counter examples to this absurd principle.

You can think of any number of.

Cases where the New Testament doesn't mention something that might be relevant. And then would you conclude that therefore the New Testament doesn't believe that to be true?

I'll give you an example.

The Jerusalem Council considered the Judaizers in their demand for circumcision. Now the Jerusalem Council might have mentioned that circumcision, as a matter of fact, is replaced by baptism. Since I didn't mention that, I guess it isn't true that baptism is the.

Current form of circumcision.

And yet Paul teaches that Precisely in Colossians 2. Arguments from silence are fallacious, and there's.

All sorts of absurd counterexamples.

And the fact that a civil pun is not laid down in the case of, say, Paul writing to the Church only indicates that Paul was writing to the Church and he wasn't giving instructions for society. Paul had some specified purpose, some narrow purpose in writing what he did do, and he was giving instructions to the Church in particular.

And it's not at that point relevant.

To bring in what the civil magistrate has to be doing. Paul's trying to direct the Church. In the case of the woman taken in adultery, Jesus actually endorses the Old Testament law when he says, let him who is without sin cast the first stone, which is following up the requirements of Deuteronomy 17, 19 and numbers 5, where a person had to be free of the sin, and the person brought.

Accusations, accusation against another and a capital crime.

That person, the witness, had to be willing to cast the first stone. And so Jesus is saying, if she's.

Guilty and you can show it on.

Due process, then let's follow it out. Let's protect the rights of the accused as well as enforcing the law of God.

But the fact is the people in.

That particular case could not accuse her fairly and cannot be witnesses who would.

Put their hand to the deed of executing her.

In First Corinthians 5, Paul speaks of the incestuous fornicator being excommunicated because it's not relevant to be instructing the state when he's trying to speak of church discipline to the church. And when Jesus spoke of divorce as the proper response for an adulterous spouse, he does not say that the state cannot go on to execute the spouse. He simply says that in the context of the home, divorce is what would be called for. In order to purge it of evil, perhaps the state needs to be purged of evil as well. There's a real logical fallacy involved in saying that because Jesus gave divorce as the proper response for adultery, that divorce is the only response to adultery. And there's a fallacy from moving from fornication as the exclusive ground for divorce to the conclusion that divorce is the exclusive requital for fornication. That's fallacious. That's like arguing that.

Hitting 100 home.

Runs is the exclusive ground for being admitted to the Baseball hall of Fame, and that from that premise, concluding that being admitted to the Baseball hall of Fame is the only Reward for hitting 100 home runs, well, it might just be that, you know, all sorts of rewards would come from doing that in addition to it. So the logical fallacy and the theological fallacy must be exposed in this reasoning. You cannot argue from silence against capital punishment. In the New Testament, Jesus did not abrogate capital punishment for adultery. He simply said in the divorce is a proper recourse. Beyond that, the state can do what.

It has to do as well, if need be.

Paul did not say the incestuous fornicator did not deserve to die. He simply said that the Church's discipline was something else.

He was giving instructions to the Church.

And so these arguments from silence do.

Not prove their point.

So my point has been that capital punishment is warranted. There must be a moral warrant, and.

The Bible provides it.

But if you take moral warrant for capital punishment, you must hold to the civil penalties of the entire Old Testament law and not take a smorgasbord approach and try to discriminate among them, nor try to abrogate them on the basis of silence. Now, for the issues that we were.

Not able to get to in this.

Course, we'll take them up on an individual basis when we get to contemporary ethical issues as part of our course on, ah, legal or duty ethics, the deontological approach to ethics, which we'll have next spring.

Thank you very much.