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How Tradition Points Away From The Death Penalty

How Tradition Points Away From The Death Penalty

Last updated on: October 12, 2026 at 1:32 am by Henry Karlson

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How Tradition Points Away From The Death Penalty 2026-10-12T01:32:07-05:00 Henry Karlson

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Beyond Forgetting: St. John Paul II, who helped direct Catholics to reject the use of the death penalty /Wikimedia Commons

Once again, the death penalty is in the news. This has been, in part, because of the discussion surrounding the botched attempt of the execution of Christa Pike. Similarly, some of it comes as a result of the way Pope Leo XIV pointed out Catholic teaching rejects the use of the death penalty, that it promotes the dignity of all human life, including those guilty of major crimes. Almost immediately, he received a great deal of backlash, with many, including Catholics, trying to suggest he didn’t know Catholic tradition or Scripture. Their actions, and the way they rejoice in the way of death, the way the laugh at the cruelty involved in the death penalty, prove his point. They are bloodthirsty, and as such, have little to no respect to the dignity of life. When reading their comments, it is obvious that they think their very limited, simplistic understanding of Scripture and the Christian tradition trumps the pope’s. While this would not be surprising if it came from non-Catholic critics, it startling to see it coming from those who are Catholic, especially those who regard themselves to be traditionalists, for their resistance to him and what he said represents a fundamental resistance to the traditional authority of the pope and to a basic Catholic teaching (that all life is sacred).

The reality of the matter is that neither tradition, nor Scripture, is as clear as they think it is regarding the use of the death penalty. True, we can find it being used in both Scripture and the Christian tradition, but, we must ask ourselves, why; was it because the death penalty itself was seen as a good? The answer is no. It was rather a kind of economic dispensation, used to help limit the evil which was done, and redirect us to ultimate see the value of all life, and the need to preserve and protect it, so that eventually we would no longer employ its use. That is, it first served as a way to take death out of the hands of ordinary people seeking revenge, and to make it a matter of the state. But then, tradition pushed the state to slowly eliminate its use, until it was no longer employed, similar to the way other human practices were first allowed due the hardness of their hearts, only to be eliminated over time (such as the use of animal sacrifices).

Vladimir Solovyov, that great 19th century philosopher, whose ideas on the death penalty anticipated 20th century developments (and probably helped influence them), dealt with many of the questions raised by the pope’s critics. In one of the many texts he wrote on the matter, he provided a rather swift presentation of his views, including a succinct way at dealing with the way he believed the Bible was being misunderstood by the advocates of the death penalty. He suggests that they take parts of Scripture, isolated them from the rest of Scripture, and used them to ignore the norm presented in it, so that they can use the exceptions as the norms instead. For, Solovyov says, if we look to Scripture, we see it begins with a denial of the death penalty by showing how God forbade the killing of Cain:

The proclamation of a norm after the first murder: a criminal, even fratricide, is not subject to human execution: “And the Lord put a mark on Cain, so that no one would kill him.”[1]

Solovyov said that over time, humanity fell into greater and greater sins, leading them to understand the world in a way which affirms those sins. It could be said that they embraced the way of death, and used the brutality of death to create a form of law and order. Humanity became bloodthirsty. It was, during this time, God allowed the use of animal sacrifices but aimed to put those sacrifices to an end; and it was also during this time God allowed the use of the death penalty so that humanity could be directed away from it. So, Solovyov suggested, there was a time of adaptation, where divine pedagogy allowed for the use of the death penalty while not actually approving its use, which is why, behind its use, we can find hints of God’s affirmation of the value of life:

Adaptation of the norm to the “hard-heartedness of the people” after the Flood, which was called forth by extreme displays of evil in human nature: “He who spills the blood of a man – a man will spill his blood.” [2]

Finally, Solovyov explained, we come to the third and last stage, when God redirects humanity, having it once again return to the general norm, but now, in a way which transcended its original use, as we now understand why justice must include mercy in its application for it to be truly just:

A return to the norm in the prophets and in the Gospels: “Vengeance is mine, says the Lord; I will repay.” With what will he repay? “Mercy I desire, and not sacrifice.” “I came to recover and save the lost.”[3]

Solovyov found the first and third stages the most important, while he saw those who try to promote the death penalty were stuck in and attempted to reify the intermediary stage, the stage which was meant to be temporary and used to help redirect humanity back to the principles it had lost:

To snatch out arbitrarily from this whole only intermediate parts without a beginning and an end is an insincere and frivolous business; and to rely on the Bible in general in favor of the death penalty – attests either to a hopeless incomprehension or a boundless insolence. [4]

It has been decades since I have come to see the truth in this. Becoming Catholic helped me. And now, whenever I see someone attacking a pope when they promotes life over death, be it Pope Leo XIV now, or St. John Paul II, Benedict XVI, or Francis, I see the insolence behind their attacks. This is especially true with those Catholics who claim to be traditionalists thinking they can be traditional while arguing against a pope exercising their authority to interpret the church’s tradition. Such so-called traditionalists like to take elements from Scripture, or tradition, while ignoring the greater teaching in both. For, it is important to recognize that God promotes the dignity of all life, and this must be seen as the principle by which our moral positions enfold; if they saw this, they would know pope is following tradition, pointing out what it teaches overall, that is, the inviolable dignity of the human person.

While I agree with Solovyov’s approach, I also think there is another aspect to the discussion which needs to be acknowledged, and that is the question of Biblical hermeneutics. Those who use the Bible to promote the capital punishment demonstrate they have a very simple, literalistic, indeed, fundamentalistic approach to Scripture, one which is not so traditional. Christians and Jews alike have understood the stories and histories in Scripture are not to be taken so simply, but rather, to be explored, questioned, so that we can find the hidden meanings we are intended to learn from them. Origen, in the second and third centuries, the first true Christian “Biblical Scholar,” gives a very different approach, one which is central to my own understanding of Scripture. He pointed out Scripture took on historical events, and added to them details which might not have been historical, or elements which demonstrate the understanding of the people at the time, but which can be and should be examined in the light of Christ, and what we have learned from Christ; when we do so, we begin to see what lies behind the surface is what is important:

He composed a texture of both kinds in one style of narration, always concealing the hidden meaning more deeply; but where the historical narrative could not be made appropriate to the spiritual coherence of the occurrences, He inserted sometimes certain things which either did not take place or could not take place; sometimes also what might happen, but what did not: and He does this at one time in a few words, which, taken in their “bodily” meaning, seem incapable of containing truth, and at another by the insertion of many. And this we find frequently to be the case in the legislative portions, where there are many things manifestly useful among the “bodily” precepts, but a very great number also in which no principle of utility is at all discernible, and sometimes even things which are judged to be impossibilities. Now all this, as we have remarked, was done by the Holy Spirit in order that, seeing those events which lie on the surface can be neither true nor useful, we may be led to the investigation of that truth which is more deeply concealed, and to the ascertaining of a meaning worthy of God in those Scriptures which we believe to be inspired by Him.[5]

Origen was clear throughout his writings that we must not allow our reading of Scripture lead us to create a vision of God which is contrary to who God is, which is the righteous God of love, the God who seeks the good for all of us. We must not think of God as being bloodthirsty, seeking the destruction of any life. So, Origen as said, we must not read those texts which seem to suggest God wants us to kill, or commit genocide, literally; we must not read them as suggesting God wanted the people of Israel to go to war and exterminate various peoples in and around the land of Israel. Instead, following Paul, he sees the true war lies within; we are to see such texts as representing the way God wants us to overcome our true enemy, sin. That is, we should view God’s commands to kill or destroy evil kings as representing God wanting us to stop the evil which reigns in us, and not as God as wanting the people of Israel to be genocidal warmongers:

“Sin has reigned” in every one of us, and in every one of us vices have reigned, and in every one of us was a general kingdom of sin, just as the Apostle says, “For all have sinned and are devoid of the glory of God.” Yet everyone also had some particular ”king” in him who reigned in him and ruled over him. For example, in one, avarice had a kingdom; in another, pride; falsehood reigned in another; lust ruled another; and another endured rage as his king. [6]

The wars in Scripture, therefore, can be seen as representations of the spiritual war happening within us:

You will read in the Holy Scriptures about the battles of the just ones, about the slaughter and carnage of murderers, and that the saints spare none of their deeply rooted enemies. If they do spare them, they are even charged with sin, just as Saul was charged because he had preserved the life of Agag king of Amalek. You should understand the wars of the just by the method I set forth above, that these wars are waged by them against sin. But how will the just ones endure if they reserve even a little bit of sin? Therefore, this is said of them: “They did not leave behind even one, who might be saved or might escape.”[7]

Scripture, therefore, is not to be taken at face value. We must work with it. We must seek to find the hidden meanings behind the texts. Those who promote the death penalty on the basis of Scripture not only ignore the pattern in it which suggests we must end our reliance upon it (as suggested by Solovyov), they do not properly embrace the Christian tradition, as they do not understand the traditional way Christians have interpreted the texts they want to use. When I was a Protestant, I was like that, but when I started exploring traditional theology, especially as I studied ancient Christian writers and saw how the engaged Scripture, I saw how mistaken my simple approach was, I even learned how Paul used allegory to promote his own mission in the church, and how that served as an example for early Christian commentators to do the same, among those being some who have influenced me the most in the way I examine and explore Scripture, such as St. Gregory of Nyssa, St. Maximos the Confessor, and even St. Anthony of Padua. Once I understood this, I now know those texts which suggest the use of the death penalty do not have to be taken literally; they can be seen, like the texts associated with war, as a reflection of how we are to stop sin in our own personal lives.

Just as the greater Christian tradition did not follow a simplistic reading of Scripture, so it always promoted the value of life, and we must keep this in mind when we consider the morality of the death penalty. Executing someone is the ultimate denial of life; it tells us that, at best, its value is limited, and someone can act in such a way that their actions end up being greater, and worse, than their own inherent worth. This is why they think such a person should be put to death, as their life has only a negative value. Some might suggest the Christian tradition allows this, but I think such a reading of the tradition ignores what the church was and is doing with its dispensations allowing some countries to use the death penalty as a means of promoting law and order. The church followed the example of divine pedagogy; as it spread across the world, taking in new peoples, new cultures, it had to baptize those cultures, taking in the good and using it, while helping the people in them change when their cultural traditions went against Christian moral expectations. And so, the church adapted itself and its disciplines to meet the needs of the time, even as it did so with the aim to help everyone overcome the bloodthirst found throughout the world. That is, it followed the same trajectory concerning the death penalty that Solovyov suggests God established in Scripture. First, it demonstrated itself as fundamentally opposed to capital punishment by affirming the value of all human life; then, in the second stage, it gave dispensations to the new cultures, to slowly guide them into a new way of thinking, one which went against the retributive form of justice that embraced the power of death as a tool to execute such justice, so that such cultures could come to terms with the church’s promotion of life. And now, the church expect all Christians to take a firm stand in defense of all life. Thus, we find ourselves returning to, and finding more value in, early Christian writings, especially in the apologists, when they tell us Christians know that they should not kill, with St. Athenagoras giving a prime example of this teaching:

What man of sound mind, therefore, will affirm, while such is our character, that we are murderers? For we cannot eat human flesh till we have killed some one. The former charge, therefore, being false, if any one should ask them in regard to the second, whether they have seen what they assert, not one of them would be so barefaced as to say that he had. And yet we have slaves, some more and some fewer, by whom we could not help being seen; but even of these, not one has been found to invent even such things against us. For when they know that we cannot endure even to see a man put to death, though justly; who of them can accuse us of murder or cannibalism? Who does not reckon among the things of greatest interest the contests of gladiators and wild beasts, especially those which are given by you? But we, deeming that to see a man put to death is much the same as killing him, have abjured such spectacles. How, then, when we do not even look on, lest we should contract guilt and pollution, can we put people to death? And when we say that those women who use drugs to bring on abortion commit murder, and will have to give an account to God for the abortion, on what principle should we commit murder? For it does not belong to the same person to regard the very fœtus in the womb as a created being, and therefore an object of God’s care, and when it has passed into life, to kill it; and not to expose an infant, because those who expose them are chargeable with child-murder, and on the other hand, when it has been reared to destroy it. But we are in all things always alike and the same, submitting ourselves to reason, and not ruling over it.[8]

Again, it was in the second state, after Christians found themselves taking over positions of the state, ruling over Christians and non-Christians alike, ruling over countries with long-standing traditions which the people accepted without questions, we find the church gave various dispensations, seeing it as a matter of economia; they allowed the state to use the death penalty, while still indicating it would be best for Christians not to be involved in its use (which is what St. Ambrose taught). Sadly, as this era was an extensive one, as it took centuries for Christianity to spread throughout the world, many concluded the dispensation was the norm, and that the use of the death penalty could even be said to be a good. This is the wrong way to read tradition. The Christian position has always been that of mercy and grace, affirming the need to promote life over death; it allowed dispensations, not just with the death penalty, but with war (“just war doctrine”); but behind them all was the desire to protect and preserve the dignity of life. Christian authorities who gave out such dispensations pointed out that they did not overturn the general norm. We must not conclude killing someone in a way which was “justified” was in and of itself, a good; there might be good results which emerge from it, but the act itself is never a good, which is why many leaders of the church told those who were involved in the death of anyone, even if it was in a just war, were expected to undergo penance.

With regards the death penalty in the modern age, which is the third stage, we find popes have indicated that the dispensations which were used in the past no longer apply. It is time for the Christian affirmation of life to take precedence over any call for death: “This should not cause surprise: to kill a human being, in whom the image of God is present, is a particularly serious sin. Only God is the master of life!”[9] St. John Paul II pointed out that it has always been important to preserve life if we can, so that, because we have better means to deal with criminals, one of the justifications used for their execution is no longer applicable:

In any event, the principle set forth in the new Catechism of the Catholic Church remains valid: “If bloodless means are sufficient to defend human lives against an aggressor and to protect public order and the safety of persons, public authority must limit itself to such means, because they better correspond to the concrete conditions of the common good and are more in conformity to the dignity of the human person”.[10]

Again, I must be clear. The death penalty was never a good in and of itself. Killing someone is always evil; the issue is whether or not it was permitted in some situations, and if it were, the culpability behind such action was limited. And, of course, we see that, at times, it was allowed, just as just wars were allowed, just as slavery even was allowed. It is difficult to deny this. But we must not assume these allowances indicate it was good. Christian doctrine developed, allowing us to see how and why slavery is an evil, and its allowance in the past did not change that fact. There were a few, like St. Gregory of Nyssa, who anticipated Christian rejection of the slave trade, but sadly, they were few and far between. Now, we are required to do the same with the death penalty. And so, while I see many Catholics, especially those claiming to traditionalists, or those claiming to be “conservative,” attacking pope after pope, acting like the popes do not know the Bible or the Catholic tradition, I see they tend to be the ones ignorant of what they are talking about, as they are ignoring the greater Christian tradition and its ways of interpreting Scripture. Many of them do with tradition what Solovyov says some do with Scripture: they take a part of the historical tradition, and what was allowed, out of context of the greater trajectory found in it, so that they can use a particular instance to undermine the trajectory itself and claim it was the norm. Doing this, they really are not following tradition; they act like it is frozen, when, in reality, it has always been in flux; they are like someone who is forty trying to act as if they were still ten. To understand tradition, and Catholic teaching, one must understand how tradition develops, and to see, behind all such developments, are basic principles which must be upheld. Among those principles is the dignity of life. The death penalty, like all attacks on life, undermines that dignity, and in the end, as Solovyov suggested, its affirmation ends up affirming murder, for its justification follows the same principles that murderers use to justify killing someone else. “The death penalty is murder, as such, absolutely murder that is in principle the denial of a fundamental moral attitude towards man.”[11] For, as he also said, it upholds the same inhumanity which is seen by those who commit an act of murder:

Second, the death penalty is inhumane – not from the aspect of sensitivity, but from the aspect of moral principle. The question is completely one of principle: should there be any boundary recognized in the human individual regarding external action upon it, something inviolable and not subject to annulment from without? The horror which murder instills sufficiently demonstrates that there is such a boundary and it is connected with the life of man. [12]

I have not always understood this. I was raised without knowing the Christian tradition; I was raised to have a very simplistic approach to Scripture, one which led me to believe we should uphold the use of the death penalty. It was when I became Catholic, I began to see things differently. St. John Paul II required me to reconsider what I thought I understood. I came to see that the issue at hand has always been the dignity of life, and how life, all life, is sacred. I came to see why the question of innocence didn’t matter. Life is sacred, whether or not someone is a criminal, whether or not they violated the dignity of life themselves. My study of the Christian tradition helped me reread Scripture, and then my turn to the Sophiologists, starting with Vladimir Solovyov, who wrote extensively on the immorality behind the death penalty, made me realize how important the issue is and why I must respond to all those who would ridicule the church for its teachings (or, who would like us to go backwards, and not only embrace the death penalty, but turn it into a spectacle by having an execution streamed live). I find, moreover, Solovyov is correct; at this stage, Catholics who oppose the pope really are obstinate, if not insolence, and behind it, for many, is a Satanic pride which wants to take down and destroy all things.

[1] Vladimir Soloviev, “Law and Morality: Essays in Applied Ethics” in Politics, Law & Morality: Essays by. V.S. Soloviev. Trans. Vladimir Wozniuk (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 175 [On The Death Penalty].

[2] Vladimir Soloviev, “Law and Morality: Essays in Applied Ethics,” 175-6 [On The Death Penalty].

[3] Vladimir Soloviev, “Law and Morality: Essays in Applied Ethics,” 176 [On The Death Penalty].

[4] Vladimir Soloviev, “Law and Morality: Essays in Applied Ethics,” 176 [On The Death Penalty].

[5] Origen, “On First Principles” in ANF(4): 503 (Bk4 c15)

[6] Origen, Homilies on Joshua. Trans. Barbara J. Bruce. Ed. Cynthia White (Washington, DC: CUA Press, 2002), 144-5 [Homily 15].

[7] Origen, Homilies on Joshua, 94 [Homily 8].

[8] Athenagoras, “A Plea for the Christians” in ANF(2):147.

[9] St. John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae. Vatican translation. ¶55.

[10] St. John Paul II, Evangelium Vitae, ¶56.

[11] Vladimir Soloviev, “Law and Morality: Essays in Applied Ethics,” 181 [On The Death Penalty].

[12] Vladimir Soloviev, “Law and Morality: Essays in Applied Ethics,” 180 [On The Death Penalty].

* This Is Another Post From My Personal (Informal) Reflections And Speculations Series

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