--Romans 13:3-4
The concept of human government may have been ordained by God as a terrestrial solution to crime and evil, but governments were not authorized to invent their own definitions of justice or define just punishments for crime. Their immense authority must be subject to the higher authority of the supreme moral law they attempt to capture in their own laws. Although the high emphasis on Scriptural authority in the Christian community seemingly would lead to Christians defending and advocating the very legal code that they believe God himself revealed to Israel, many Christians try to distance themselves as far as possible from Mosaic Law, in explicit contradiction of their claims that God is just and good and would never instruct anyone to do something evil. In fact, many of them seem to see no ethical or theological problem with abandoning criminal law and punishment to the relativistic American society that has no rational or metaphysical basis for its moral beliefs. To the contrary, I have heard sermons or noticed Christian websites directly endorse Roman use of extremely barbaric penalties like crucifixion [1] and express apathy towards both God's divine legal decrees and the influence of pagan and secular ideas of justice. However, Romans 13 does not deprive Mosaic Law of its moral authority or authorize the government to operate outside of the moral boundaries imposed by it.
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| Can conflicting punitive philosophies and punishments employed by various governments all be simultaneously just? No. |
Did God smile when Draco of Greece executed people for vegetable theft? Did he gaze with approval as the Romans sadistically tortured their criminals with such intensity that even other Romans would not describe it fully? Is justice upheld when Islamic officials demand that the hands of thieves be permanently removed (Surah 5:38)? Were ancient societies right to commonly mutilate offenders? If the answer to these questions is no, then do not say that such governments as those which enforce such penalties are legitimate or just, much less blessed by God. And no one can find a standard by which to judge the correctness or error of these pagan punishments except by the one God made plain in the Old Testament. But this is the very standard some Christians disregard and fear.
No government can justify executing people for crimes like theft [2] or assault [3] or torturing people beyond the mild tortures allowed in Scripture [4], nor can a government justify lightly punishing rape [5] or kidnapping [6]. Hell, a government cannot even justify its own existence apart from submission to the objective morality that God alone can ground or reveal. Never does Romans 13 allow any pagan government the liberty of usurping, perverting, or ignoring the laws God revealed and established. Interestingly and disturbingly, people who focus more on the New Testament than the Old are far likelier to express lenience towards injustices that the Old Testament laws would never tolerate. The depravities of the American prison system, the leniency or cruelty found in modern justice systems, the emphasis on separating government from God and theological truths . . . those who honor the Old Testament do not view these things as just or acceptable, yet many modern Christians are quite content to keep enforcement of justice and theology separate, to demonize the Mosaic Law revealed by the God they claim to follow while supporting a corrupt and crumbling governmental body, and to adopt baseless societal moral preferences while abandoning objective moral facts.
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| If Christianity is true (and a great deal of evidence supports this claim), then what the Bible says about criminal punishment is morally valid and whatever contradicts it is false. |
What other standard could someone appeal to other than Mosaic Law? Intuition? Nobody seems to have the same moral intuitions regarding what should be labeled a crime and what the just punishments for crimes are. Emotion? Something as subjective and malleable as emotion could never lead us to justice. Consensus? Consensus always fluctuates and people have agreed that dementedly unjust laws are acceptable. Natural law? Natural law is merely a sophisticated phrase referring to something subjective--merely the conscience; conscience is better than nothing but is subject to the same problems mentioned in the past few sentences. No one can look to nature and find moral truths without committing the infamous naturalistic fallacy. Nature doesn't inform us of how things should be, it merely depicts how they are.
What then shall we substitute for God's laws? The barrage of ever-changing and conflicting ideals found across varying societies? Personal preferences about justice? The unreliable feelings and shifting consensus of the philosophically and theologically uninformed and ignorant populace? Trying to construct a moral epistemology and justice system apart from reconstructionism is a hopeless pursuit without any ontological or epistemological foundation. To seek or defend a criminal justice system other than that of God is to allow a human government to commit injustice of various types; there could be no other result when humans neglect God's objective punitive standard.
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| Human legal systems possess no inherent moral authority. Whatever authority they have depends on their conformity to the moral revelation of God. |
Arguing that government is sacred apart from alignment with God's revelation on legal and political matters is a worthless endeavor, for there can be nothing authoritative or valuable about government outside of its proper boundaries [7].
[1]. See below:
A. "Barabbas knew that he was guilty and that he had done crimes worthy of death. He knew that he deserved to go to that cross and to suffer the DEATH PENALTY. He knew he was justly condemned."
--http://www.middletownbiblechurch.org/lifeochr/lifeoc14.htm
B. "While Jesus was on the cross the Romans inflicted the death penalty on the two criminals next to Him. Christ said nothing in their defense, or against their crucifixions. One of those two mocked Christ. In response, the other criminal (whom Jesus would immediately declare righteous, Luke 23:43) said of their punishments, 'we indeed justly, for we receive the due reward of our deeds; but this Man has done nothing wrong' (Luke 23:41). What did this forgiven criminal, this newly justified man, say about the death penalty? Bottom line: the criminals were getting their just punishment. The dying criminal knew the truth, as he said, 'we indeed' are 'justly' punished."
--http://kgov.com/death-penalty
[2]. Exodus 22:1-4, 7-15; Leviticus 6:1-5; Numbers 5:5-8.
[3]. Exodus 21:18-19.
[4]. Deuteronomy 25:1-3.
[5]. Deuteronomy 22:25-27.
[6]. Exodus 21:16; Deuteronomy 24:7.
[7]. I have written multiple times already on this matter, either to clarify the actual meaning or function of certain Biblical laws or to refute distortions or misconceptions about them. Note that there are more posts on this blog which address other issues of theonomy/reconstructionism, Mosaic Law, and just penalties.
A. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/reconstructionism.html
B. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/jesus-and-paul-on-mosaic-law.html
C. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/capital-crimes-part-1.html
D. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/capital-crimes-part-2.html
E. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/07/capital-crimes-part-3.html
F. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/08/corporal-punishment-part-1.html
G. http://thechristianrationalist.blogspot.com/2016/08/corporal-punishment-part-2.html
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