Burying the Ax
Even in the United States, the world‟s fourth leading practitioner of capital punishment,
support is weakening. Nearly a thousand persons have been executed since the death penalty was
reintroduced in 1976, and over 3,400 prisoners currently await execution in US. Still, the number
of persons executed in 2004 was the lowest since 1998, and the number sentenced to death was
the lowest since 1976. Until recently the United States led the world in the execution of juvenile
offenders, but in 2005 the Supreme Court ruled that putting such persons to death was
unconstitutional, and in 2002 the high court finally outlawed the execution of the mentally
retarded. Throughout the nation juries in every state but Texas and New Mexico are now offered
and increasingly choose the option of imposing a life sentence without parole.
The Biblical Arguments.
Christian support for capital punishment has long relied on a handful of biblical passages:
Genesis 9:6, Exodus 21:23-25, and Romans 13:1-7. Before addressing those passages and
offering some biblical arguments against capital punishment, we should note several points.
First, all of the biblical passages calling for the death penalty “are found in the first five
books of the Bible; none appears in the prophets, the writings, or the New Testament, which do
not teach the death penalty.”
2
Indeed, not only does the New Testament fail to “teach the death
penalty,” but Jesus‟ radical and consistent demand that his followers reject vengeance and
embrace forgiveness places a major roadblock in the way of any Christian attempt to construct a
biblical justification for capital punishment.
Second, much of the Mosaic Law regarding the death penalty was meant to reduce the
level of violence in society, preventing escalating blood feuds that avenged their victims seven or
seventy fold. These passages were not written to command that a life be taken for a life, but to
forbid anyone from ever taking more than one life.
Third, it is not clear ancient Israelites understood these biblical passages as requiring
them to actually execute offenders. Leading Rabbinic scholars of the second century of the
common era argued that biblical mandates about capital punishment were a symbolic reminder
of the importance of following God‟s law, but that legal and moral requirements made it
practically impossible to execute anyone.
3
Fourth, for three centuries after the death of Jesus leading Christian authors argued that
Christians were forbidden to participate in the death penalty. Even though writers like Justin
Martyr, Tertullian, Origen and Cyprian of Carthage accepted the state‟s authority to execute
criminals, they argued that Christians could not in conscience order or carry out such killings.
4
Passages in Support of Capital Punishment.
2
Westmoreland-White and Stassen, “Biblical perspectives on the Death Penalty,” 124.
3
David Novak, “Can Capital Punishment Ever Be Justified in the Jewish Tradition?” in Owens, Carlson, and
Elshtain, eds., Religion and the Death Penalty (Grand Rapids, MI: Eerdmans, 2004) 35-41.
4
E. Christian Brugger, Capital Punishment and Roman Catholic Moral Tradition (Notre Dame, IN: University of
Notre Dame Press, 2003) 75-84.