japantiger said:95LawAg said:japantiger said:95LawAg said:japantiger said:95LawAg said:
You are correct in that contemporary moral judgments are not automatically correct because they're contemporary. Similarly, the age of a moral claim doesn't establish its validity or invalidity. Neither does its religious or secular origin. The appropriate test is the quality of its reasoning, its evidentiary support where applicable, and its consistency with defensible moral principles.
Accordingly, if biblical claims must survive scrutiny just like contemporary claims, then citing scripture cannot, by itself, establish that the death penalty is justified.
Further, you appear to be conflating contested contemporary political and cultural positions with far more broadly established moral principles. You've assembled a collection of scientific theories, medical procedures, economic predictions, political movements, contested cultural issues, and ethical principles into a single category of supposedly failed contemporary "truths." None of these is directly equivalent to foundational ethical propositions such as the current, broadly-held morals regarding practices such as slavery or the use of the death penalty for adultery or violating the Sabbath, practices historically supported by biblical citations.
As for slavery, Christianity did play an important role in abolition. It also played an important role in justifying slavery. Both sides relied upon biblical teachings to support their positions. That seems to reinforce my point about the limitations of relying upon scripture as unquestionable moral authority.
I'm not suggesting contemporary morality is infallible. I'm suggesting that moral principles, whether ancient or contemporary, should be subject to examination, reasoned argument, and scrutiny.
Clearly, there is considerable disagreement regarding the ethics of capital punishment, at least in the United States. There appears to be considerably broader agreement that executions should not be turned into public spectacles.
If you don't accept the Bible as God's revealed word and the objective moral standard that comes from it, then we are not going to agree on the death penalty or on most other basic questions of justice.
You keep appealing to an undefined standard of ethics (contemporary understanding, broadly held morals, human rights, the quality of reasoning) as if that standard were self-evident and sufficient to rule Scripture out. Ethics based on what? Once biblical authority is set aside, there is no remaining objective foundation that can tell us why murder deserves death, why it does not, or why any other punishment is required or forbidden. Current consensus, personal conviction, and institutional fashion are just descriptions of what some people presently prefer. They supply no obligation that binds anyone who disagrees.
Broad agreement or disagreement is an even weaker basis. Majorities and elites endorsed that whole list of crap I put up earlier...all of those things originated as a direct attack on biblical truth. Counting heads or measuring elite sentiment does not generate a moral duty. And, oh, by the way; since leftist truth has had the upper hand; there's not a single societal measure that has improved.
A Christian moral worldview is built by submitting to what Scripture actually says, in this case about murder, the image of God, and the magistrate's authority to punish. It's not about polling the surrounding culture or waiting for a consensus (that will never arrive).
You say that, "A Christian moral worldview is built by submitting to what scripture actually says..."
1. The starting point is scripture that has been transmitted, translated, and compiled through human involvement over centuries. Those processes inevitably involve human judgment and discretion.
2. That translated text is then subject to further interpretation regarding its "true meaning." Again, human judgment enters the equation.
3. In many cases, there's yet another level of human variability because people base their moral conclusions upon someone else's interpretation of translated scripture.
So, when you say "what Scripture actually says," I ask, "According to whom?" What influenced those translations, interpretations, and conclusions? Inevitably, the learning, experiences, historical circumstances, and potential biases of the people involved.
Consider the pope, for example. Catholicism recognizes significant papal teaching authority, yet Catholics themselves have disagreed with popes throughout history. And as evidenced by this thread, even those who recognize religious authority don't necessarily agree about what scripture requires.
It seems your position is that scripture provides direct access to an objective, divinely established moral standard. My concern is that our access to that standard is necessarily mediated by imperfect human understanding.
I'm not challenging your faith in God, nor am I attempting to establish that divine moral truth cannot exist. I'm challenging the proposition that any particular human interpretation of scripture can be treated as an unquestionable expression of that truth.
Even if the source is divine, our understanding of it remains human.
My position isn't that scripture cannot provide moral guidance. It's that invoking scripture doesn't eliminate the need to justify one's particular interpretation or its application to public policy.
I'm assuming you don't support slavery or executing people who commit adultery or violate the Sabbath. If so, you already demonstrate what I am suggesting. We necessarily exercise human judgment in determining which biblical teachings remain applicable, how they should be interpreted, and whether they provide sufficient moral justification for contemporary public policy.
The fact that people copied, translated, and taught the Bible doesn't turn "what Scripture says" into an empty phrase. We can still tell a straightforward reading from a strained one. Your real objection is selective skepticism: because humans are involved and sometimes get things wrong, no particular reading can count as a reliable take on the text. If fallibility means we can't know what a text says, the same problem accrues to your own claims about morality, etc. You're human too. You don't get to demand a level of certainty for Scripture and ignore it everywhere else.
We don't need infallibility to read a text and act on it. Everyday life turns on telling better readings from worse ones. The chance that some people miss the point or apply only part of a text (as happened with some defenses of slavery) doesn't make every interpretation equal or leave the plain sense of the words unknowable. Christians have split on secondary issues for centuries without concluding the Bible says nothing clear about murder or the authority of government.
The same goes for the Mosaic penalties on adultery or Sabbath-breaking, or the limits placed on slavery. Those belong to specific old-covenant or historical settings (this is a thread to itself). They don't wipe out the repeated, clear lines on murder and the magistrate's sword. An error, even a serious one, on one question does not license selective skepticism about every other question the text addresses.
Invoking Scripture doesn't end every policy argument by magic, and interpretations still have to be defended. But the longstanding reading of Genesis 9:6 and Romans 13 is not some obscure interpretation. Setting it aside still requires a real argument. Selective skepticism doesn't give you one, because the identical human limits apply to whatever substandard substitute you prefer. It doesn't erase the gap between a clear text and a forced reading, and it leaves you administering justice on the shifting sands of popular opinion rather than on the rock of the plain language of Scripture.
I think we're closer to agreement than you may realize. You acknowledge that human fallibility doesn't preclude reliable interpretation, but also that interpretations must be defended. I agree with both propositions.
Your explanation of why the biblical death penalties for adultery and Sabbath violations no longer apply illustrates my point. You're using historical context, covenantal distinctions, and theological reasoning to determine which biblical prescriptions apply today. That's a legitimate approach, but it necessarily involves human interpretation and judgment.
I recognize that Genesis 9:6 and Romans 13 have long been interpreted as supporting capital punishment. But establishing that scripture permits a particular punishment is not necessarily the same as establishing that it requires that punishment, or that it's the most morally appropriate response under contemporary circumstances.
So I'd return to two questions: Why should murder be punished by death rather than life imprisonment? And even if we accept execution as an appropriate punishment, what moral justification exists for broadcasting it to the public?
Those questions deserve substantive answers. Simply establishing that scripture can be interpreted to authorize capital punishment doesn't fully answer either one.
Genesis 9:6 grounds the state's authority to take life for murder in the fact that the victim is made in God's image. That image is what sets human life apart, so deliberately destroying an image-bearer calls for a matched response. The same texts address bloodguilt, the unique guilt from shedding innocent blood. Numbers 35:33 says blood pollutes the land and no atonement can be made except by the blood of the one who shed it. Justice requires that liability to be discharged; lesser penalties don't do it.
Romans 13 places the sword in the magistrate's hand to carry out justice. Scripture distinguishes degrees of killing: the intentional murderer is subject to death, while accidental or unpremeditated killing may be spared. Once a homicide is judged intentional, the warrant for death is clear.
A prison sentence still gives the offender continued life and provisions the victims no longer have, paid for by an innocent society and, most perversely, by the victim's own family. It is certainly an insult to our community and civilization. I cannot imagine a greater insult to a victim's family. And it sets the same outer limit for murdering an image-bearer as for lesser crimes.
In premeditated mass murder, especially when the killer claimed a religious warrant for targeting soldiers, the gap is even wider. The act was calculated and framed as legitimate against dar al-harb. Lesser penalties do nothing distinctive to mark the value of the image of God or to settle the bloodguilt. Death is the penalty that matches the crime in both severity and finality instead of leaving the wrong unanswered in permanent custody.
I appreciate the thoughtfulness of your response. You've presented a coherent argument grounded in your understanding of scripture. While I don't share your conclusions, I recognize that you've given them serious consideration, and I respect that. Your comments and positions are far from thoughtless recitation of scripture.
I'd like to revisit something you said earlier: "Once biblical authority is set aside, there is no remaining objective foundation" for determining what punishments are morally justified.
I fundamentally disagree with that proposition, including the assumption that the Bible necessarily provides an objective moral standard simply because it is regarded as divinely inspired.
Human beings developed systems of morality, justice, and punishment long before Christianity. The Code of Hammurabi, dating to roughly 1750 BCE, is one example. Granted, that system also invoked divine authority, but it demonstrates that Christianity was not a prerequisite for developing moral and legal principles.
Philosophers including Socrates, Kant, Mill, and Dewey have also explored substantial frameworks for moral reasoning. These approaches differ, sometimes considerably, but they demonstrate that human beings can examine questions of right and wrong through reason, empathy, experience, an understanding of consequences, and principles of justice without requiring biblical authority.
None of these approaches is necessarily infallible, nor does their existence establish that God cannot be the ultimate source of morality. But it challenges the assertion that rejecting biblical authority leaves us with nothing more than personal preference or institutional fashion, or that society would devolve into chaos and anarchy without Biblical guidance.
There's also an ancient philosophical question, associated with Socrates and Plato's Euthyphro, that seems particularly relevant here: Is something morally right because God commands it, or does God command it because it is morally right?
Applied to murder, is murder wrong because God forbids it, or does God forbid murder because it is wrong?
I don't pretend that question has a universally accepted answer. But it illustrates why the relationship between divine authority and morality isn't as self-evident as your argument seems to suggest.
My own position is that we don't need God or scripture to recognize that murder is wrong. Nor do we need biblical authority to reason through how society should respond to murder, including the purposes of punishment, proportionality, deterrence, public safety, and human dignity.
That doesn't mean religious teachings cannot contribute meaningfully to those judgments. It simply means they aren't the only available source of moral guidance.
Finally, even accepting your premise that scripture provides an objective moral foundation, its interpretation and application remain subject to human judgment.
Which brings me back to the question I've raised previously: How do you determine which biblical prescriptions remain binding today and which do not?
For example, why does the biblical prescription of death for murder remain applicable, while those for adultery or violating the Sabbath do not? And how do you determine which New Testament teachings, including instructions regarding slavery and women's authority, are universal moral requirements rather than historically conditioned guidance?
I'm not suggesting there aren't thoughtful theological answers. You've shown that throughout this discussion. I'm interested in the principles that guide those answers and how we establish that they're being applied consistently.
Ultimately, I respect your reliance upon scripture as a source of moral guidance. I simply don't accept that it is the only legitimate foundation for morality, or that any particular human interpretation of it necessarily establishes objective moral truth.
