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The US Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case about capital punishment within the US. The case pending before the Court, Baze v. Rees, is not about the constitutionality of capital punishment per se, but whether the use of the “three-drug cocktail” for lethal injections that brings on death is a violation of the 8th Amendment of the Constitution which prohibits “cruel and unusual punishment.” Currently, 37 states use this three-drug combination for lethal injections in capital punishment cases. (Only Nebraska executes using the electric chair.) The Court has therefore, in effect, called for a stay of all executions within the US until the Baze case is settled. Oral arguments in this case will be heard in January and the decision will be handed down sometime next spring. How should we think biblically about capital punishment itself?
- First some thoughts about the three-drug procedure (Sodium Pentathol, Pancuronium Bromide and Potassium Chloride) used for lethal injections. Throughout US history, various methods have been used in capital punishment cases to bring about death—hanging, firing squads, electric chairs, gas chambers, and now lethal injections. In 1977, Dr. Jay Chapman, chief medical examiner in Oklahoma, developed the three-drug injection procedure. In theory, this procedure should kill the convicted criminal painlessly and quickly. However, this has not always been the case. So, the Court agreed to hear the Baze case to determine whether the 8th Amendment bars an execution method that creates an unnecessary risk of pain and suffering.
- Second, a recent study draws attention to the matter of deterrence and capital punishment. The study suggests that the death penalty, when carried out, has an enormous deterrent effect on the number of murders. The study examined the relationship between the number of executions and the number of murders in the US for the 26-year period from 1979 to 2004, using data from publicly available FBI sources. The correlations established by the data seem to suggest that when executions increase, murders decrease, and when executions decrease, murders increase. The study is rather compelling: There is a simple but dramatic relationship between the number of executions carried out and a corresponding reduction in the number of murders. Therefore, Roy Adler and Michael Summers, both of Pepperdine University, who conducted the study, reach this conclusion: “The conclusion that each execution carried out is associated with the saving of dozens of innocent lives creates an extraordinarily difficult moral dilemma for those who campaign against the death penalty.” They suggest that the proper ethical question is: “[D]o we save this particular life [i.e., the criminal] at a cost of the lives of dozens of future murder vacuities? That is a much more difficult moral dilemma, which deserves wide discussion in a free society.”
- Third, how do we approach this issue from a biblical perspective? As with the issue of war, capital punishment is filled with intellectual and theological tension. This part of this Perspective does not deal with how capital punishment is practiced in the United States or any other country. Instead, the focus is on whether one can make a biblical defense of it as a responsibility of the state. If humans bear God’s image (Genesis 1:26-27), then taking the life of an image-bearer in a premeditated act of murder ethically demands just punishment. Killing a human being is an attack on the creator God. It is a rejection of His sovereignty over human life (see Deuteronomy 32:39). But is it just to make the punishment capital?
There are several key biblical passages that make the case for capital punishment as a just obligation of the state:
1. Genesis 9:6. As Noah exits the ark, God establishes a new relationship with the human race and a new code on which to base human relationships. Because of the Flood’s destruction of all life, future generations might conclude that life is cheap to God and assume that humans can do likewise. However, the covenant affirms the sacredness of human life and that murder is punishable by losing one’s life. The text, therefore, institutes the principle of talionic justice, or law of like punishment. It is not a harsh principle of justice, for its establishes the premise that the punishment should fit the crime. It is summarized elsewhere in God’s Word as “an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth” (Exodus 21:23-25). The point of the Noahic covenant is that God removes from the families of the deceased the responsibility of justice and places it in the hands of human government, thereby eliminating issues of personal revenge and emotional anger.
2. The Mosaic Law. God’s moral law revealed to Moses was not the first time God delegated the authority of capital punishment. It is central to Genesis 9:6 and is clearly implied in Genesis 4 in His dialogue with Cain (see especially verses 10 and 14). What God did with the Mosaic law was broaden the responsibility to include many other offenses: murder (Exodus 21:12; Numbers 35:16-31; working on the Sabbath (Exodus 35:2); cursing father and mother (Leviticus 20:9); adultery (Leviticus 20:10); incest (Leviticus 20:11-12); sodomy (Leviticus 20:13, 15-16); false prophesying (Deuteronomy 13:1-10, 18:20); idolatry (Deuteronomy 21:18-21); rape (Deuteronomy 22:25); keeping an ox that has killed a human being (Exodus 21:29); kidnapping (Exodus 21:16); and intrusion of an alien into a sacred place (Numbers 1:51, 3:10, 38, 17:7). The form of execution was normally stoning or burning (see Charles Ryrie, You Mean the Bible Teaches That?, Moody: 1974, pp. 26-27).
3. Romans 13:1-7. Verse 4 is the key verse in this critical section on the authority of the state in our lives. It gives the state the authority to wield the “sword” in its role as the punisher of evil: “he [the civil ruler] bears not the sword in vain; for he is the minister of God, an avenger to execute wrath upon him that doeth evil.” The word used for sword here is machaira, which refers not only to a sword used in battle, but also to a sword used in executions, as when Herod killed James, the brother of John, in Acts 12:1-2 (see John Eidsmoe, God and Caesar Crossways, 1989, p. 200). Paul’s use of this word gives strong support to the state receiving from God the authority to execute. It gives no help in deciding which crimes are punishable by capital punishment.
In summary, the principle of talionic justice, implied in Genesis 4:10,16, was clearly instituted in Genesis 9:6 and reaffirmed quite broadly in the Mosaic law. It is likewise power delegated to the state according to Romans 13:4. The New Testament did not negate the Old Testament standard of capital punishment. Instead, the continuity of the Testaments is affirmed.
Is capital punishment a deterrent? Both the criminal justice system and theologians are divided as to whether capital punishment deters criminal behavior. But, from the perspective of Scripture, this is beside the point.
The view of capital punishment defended here gives focus to the fundamental biblical reason for capital punishment, namely killing an image bearer of God demands the life of the murderer based on the principle of talionic justice. Whether this form of justice deters further murders is almost irrelevant to the issue. Justice demands payment and the universal and binding principle that God instituted in Genesis 9:6 is as applicable today as it was in Noah’s day.
See Elizabeth Weil, Sunday New York Times (4 November 2007); Mark Essig, “This is Going to Hurt,” New York Times (4 November 2007); Roy D. Adler and Michael Summers, Wall Street Journal (2 November 2007); and James P. Eckman, Biblical Ethics, pp. 69-70. |
