Capital punishment and slavery

Last updated on: August 18, 2011 at 7:27 pm by Roger E. Olson

Capital punishment and slavery 2011-08-18T19:27:34-05:00 Roger E. Olson

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It seems to me some who have responded to my earlier post regarding capital punishment as slavery have overlooked the parallel with slavery. The logic goes: the Bible supports capital punishment, so we must support capital punishment. The same logic was used by supporters of slavery during the abolition debates in Great Britain and America in the late 18th and first half of the 19th centuries.

We now all (hopefully!) agree that slavery is a sin. But the Bible most definitely DOES NOT treat it as sin–at least not directly or explicitly. So why do we think it sin?

Because in practice, whether we admit it or not, we all (to use Kevin Vanhoozer’s imagery) “look along the Bible” and do not just stare at the Bible. That is, the Bible contains and propels us onto a trajectory–a hermeneutical direction, as it were.

Just as we have (for the most part, at least) come to recognize slavery as sin, in spite of the fact that the Bible seems to support it, so we are coming to recognize capital punishment as sin even though the Bible seems to support it.

I know some readers will jump to make distinctions between slavery and capital punishment and between the Bible’s treatments of them. That’s not my point. My point is that, in my and most Christian ethicists’ views, abolition of capital punishment is a logical deduction from principles found in Scripture–especially Jesus’ teachings about how to treat enemies.

Enlightened people, including Christians, now generally agree that punishment should be done with love and not vengeance. What is “loving punishment?” It is punishment meant to rehabilitate or keep an offender from offending again (to protect his or her potential victims). Thus, life sentences without the possibility of parole can be imposed lovingly. Execution cannot be done lovingly. And, I would argue, it is never done overall and in general (that is, within a macro-system) justly.

I think I can discern among the respondents here two distinct approaches to revelation. One stares at the Bible and refuses to look along it. Of course, even those who seem to follow this approach don’t do it consistently! The other looks along the trajectory set by revelation in Scripture and refuses to be locked into a literalistic application that would, inevitably, sanction slavery.

I recommend the book Slavery, Women and Homosexuals: Exploring the Hermeneutics of Cultural Analysis by William J. Webb. While I don’t know where Webb comes down on the capital punishment issue, I think his general hermeneutical approach undermines it.

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