Death Penalty

[Radrook]

A complete misreading of the text, which refers to death of the adult parties, not the fetus; indeed, the loss of the fetus is merely a fineable offense.

So according to you if the baby dies that doesn't qualify as a further injury because no life has been lost because according to you the unborn aren't human until they are officially born? Sorry but that sounds like pro abortionist propaganda. It also contradicts what the following professor of Old Testament Semetic Studies concludes:

Gleason Archer, Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, concludes:

"There is no ambiguity here, whatever. What is required is that if there should be an injury either to the mother or to her children, the injury shall be avenged by a like injury to the assailant. If it involves the life (nepes) of the premature baby, then the assailant shall pay for it with his life. There is no second-class status attached to the fetus under this rule; he is avenged just as if he were a normally delivered child or an older person: life for life. Or if the injury is less, but not serious enough to involve inflicting a like injury on the offender, then he may offer compensation in monetary damages..."[10] 　 [10] Gleason Archer, Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982), p. 248.

[Emphasis in bold is mine.]

The Bible doesn't view the unborn as merely non-human.
What does the Bible say about abortion? | carm

 

[Open Heart]

But for approx. 300 years, three centuries, early Christianity, which followed what Jesus and his Apostles had taught very closely, totally disagreed with your view.

These are good comments for a different thread, but I'm not going to answer them here, as I'm making a commitment to stay on topic.

Blessings!

 

[Open Heart]

So according to you if the baby dies that doesn't qualify as a further injury because no life has been lost because according to you the unborn aren't human until they are officially born? Sorry but that sounds like pro abortionist propaganda.

I am personally pro-life. I can't see how an 8 month old fetus can be anything but a human being. However, he is correct in his reading of the text: the killing of a fetus is ONLY a finable offense, it is not life for life.

 

[Radrook]

I am personally pro-life. I can't see how an 8 month old fetus can be anything but a human being. However, he is correct in his reading of the text: the killing of a fetus is ONLY a finable offense, it is not life for life.

Really?
--------------------
Gleason Archer, Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, concludes:

"There is no ambiguity here, whatever. What is required is that if there should be an injury either to the mother or to her children, the injury shall be avenged by a like injury to the assailant. If it involves the life (nepes) of the premature baby, then the assailant shall pay for it with his life. There is no second-class status attached to the fetus under this rule; he is avenged just as if he were a normally delivered child or an older person: life for life. Or if the injury is less, but not serious enough to involve inflicting a like injury on the offender, then he may offer compensation in monetary damages..."[10] 　 [10] Gleason Archer, Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982), p. 248.

[Emphasis in bold is mine.]

So between your opinion and the other poster's and the conclusion of the professor of the Old Testament and Semitic Studies, I think I will go with the professor's.

What does the Bible say about abortion? | carm

 

[Radrook]

These are good comments for a different thread, but I'm not going to answer them here, as I'm making a commitment to stay on topic.

Blessings!

Ok. Blessings as well!

 

[RDKirk]

This is hogwash.

You should do more reading of Western activity in the Middle East through the 20th century. Or even just American activity. You can start with the CIA orchestrating the assassination of Iran's first elected president.

There are no clean hands. The US has had its hands dipped in blood throughout its activities in Iran, Iraq, and Syria for sixty years.

 

[RDKirk]

I don't have to find something in the last 50 years to prove my point. I only have to find one example ANYWHERE in history to prove it. Let's take Japan in WW2. They were convinced they were better than anyone. They coveted land and resources. They wanted nothing less than a greater empire. They were immoral in their treatment of civilians, torture, enslavement, rape, etc. They attacked first for all the worst of reasons. It was not only just to defend ourselves, it would have been immoral not to have defended ourselves.

So you're using Japan as the bar of morality for the US?

"They did it too!" doesn't even work for schoolkids.

The discussion here isn't Japan, it's the morality of the US.

 

[Paul of Eugene OR]

So according to you if the baby dies that doesn't qualify as a further injury because no life has been lost because according to you the unborn aren't human until they are officially born? Sorry but that sounds like pro abortionist propaganda. It also contradicts what the following professor of Old Testament Semetic Studies concludes:

Gleason Archer, Professor of Old Testament and Semitic Studies at Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, concludes:

"There is no ambiguity here, whatever. What is required is that if there should be an injury either to the mother or to her children, the injury shall be avenged by a like injury to the assailant. If it involves the life (nepes) of the premature baby, then the assailant shall pay for it with his life. There is no second-class status attached to the fetus under this rule; he is avenged just as if he were a normally delivered child or an older person: life for life. Or if the injury is less, but not serious enough to involve inflicting a like injury on the offender, then he may offer compensation in monetary damages..."[10] 　 [10] Gleason Archer, Encyclopedia of Bible Difficulties (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1982), p. 248.

[Emphasis in bold is mine.]

The Bible doesn't view the unborn as merely non-human.
What does the Bible say about abortion? | carm

Just because you can find people who agree with you does not mean you are right. The plain fact is, scripture there contemplates a situation in which the fetus is aborted but there is only a fine to be paid. Nothing in the verse requires a different penalty whether the "fruit" lives or dies. Those committed to the unscriptural view that an unborn child has a soul have to severely strain the wording of this verse to get away with that notion.

Ex 21:22 If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.
KJV

 

[SolomonVII]

I'm not trying to make you uncomfortable; I realize good people can have different opinions on this. But how do you reconcile your opinion with the concept of justice? Justice being a life for a life. Please note that I'm only an advocate of the death penalty in cases of aggravated murder where there is NO doubt of guilt, ie a confession or 12 bodies buried in their back yard...

You are certainly not making me feel uncomfortable. My own personal beliefs is that there is a time and a place for everything, even the death penalty.

The current Catholic teaching on the death penalty is too simplistic, imho. It reckons that the time for the death penalty in western countries has long since passed. If criminal kingpins were not operating from their jail cells to order crimes on the inside and the out, this may be more true, but even then, some crimes are so abhorrent and cruel that lack of equivalent justice at least being on the books in effect cheapens life much more than the death penalty ever could.

My own point was not to argue against Catholics who disagree with the above however. Wanting to abolish the death penalty is a perfectly coherent position to take. My own point was to admonish the ecclesiastical elites from making this a part of Church teaching itself. This would be an abuse of their teaching power, given what the timeless teaching of the Judeo Christian world has always been since recorded time.

 

[Radrook]

Just because you can find people who agree with you does not mean you are right. The plain fact is, scripture there contemplates a situation in which the fetus is aborted but there is only a fine to be paid. Nothing in the verse requires a different penalty whether the "fruit" lives or dies. Those committed to the unscriptural view that an unborn child has a soul have to severely strain the wording of this verse to get away with that notion.

Ex 21:22 If men strive, and hurt a woman with child, so that her fruit depart from her, and yet no mischief follow: he shall be surely punished, according as the woman's husband will lay upon him; and he shall pay as the judges determine.
KJV

But you are leaving out the ëye for an eye, and life for a life part which would include the baby if it were killed because, according to the Bible, it is considered a human life.

You see, scriptures should not be interpreted or understood in a contextual vacuum. But that is exactly what your interpretation, does. It devalues the life an unborn human by excluding it from the life-for-a-life and contradicts the Bible's constant reminder of just how valuable the life an unborn human really is as the following scriptures clearly point out.

For you (God) created my inmost being, You knit me together in my mother's womb...My frame was not hidden from you when I was made in the secret place.

-Psalm 139:13-15

Behold, children are a blessing from the Lord. The fruit of the womb is a reward. Like armies in the hand of a warrior, so are the children of one's youth. -Psalm 127:3

Before I formed you in the womb I knew you, before you were born I set you apart..."

- Jeremiah 1:5

When Elizabeth heard Mary's greeting, the baby leaped in her womb, and Elizabeth was filled with the Holy Spirit. In a loud voice she exclaimed..."As soon as the sound of your greeting reached my ears, the baby in my womb leaped for joy" -Luke 1:41-44

Based on that alone, your idea of excluding the unborn from the life-for-a-life statement found in that scripture can't be the right interpretation.

Other scriptures which you are totally ignoring are found in this article:
What does the Bible say about abortion? | carm

BTW
Yes, finding people who agree isn't a hard thing to do.
However, finding authorities or experts on the subject who agree is an acceptable and common method of offering evidence. So why you take umbrage with it is really beyond me.

 

[Paul of Eugene OR]

But you are leaving out the ëye for an eye, and life for a life part which would include the baby if it were killed because, according to the Bible, it is considered a human life.
.

You are making an assumption there without scriptural backup. But lets not turn this thread into a discussion on abortion, if you want to have one, we should start a seperate thread.

 

[Open Heart]

So you're using Japan as the bar of morality for the US?

"They did it too!" doesn't even work for schoolkids.

I wasn't discussing the US. I was discussing an example of a Just War. Stay on topic.

Actually, as a teacher, if two of my kids got into a fight, I always found out who threw the first punch. That was the kid I sent to the office. I also found out WHY the first punch was thrown, so that if any teasing or bullying preceded it, I would act on that, calling parents or whatever needed to be done.

My rule with my own kids was this: don't you ever EVER throw the first punch, or you'll be scrubbing floors and toilets til your fingers are sore. But if someone starts a fight with you, you finish the fight. And indeed, sometimes that would happen, and the school would suspend them a day for fighting, even though they didn't start it and were only defending themselves, and I'd take them out to a movie.

 

[Open Heart]

You should do more reading of Western activity in the Middle East through the 20th century. Or even just American activity. You can start with the CIA orchestrating the assassination of Iran's first elected president.

There are no clean hands. The US has had its hands dipped in blood throughout its activities in Iran, Iraq, and Syria for sixty years.

I have a brother who is a political activist and an anarchist. You've probably even seen him on the news. He's a Political Science PhD who is very anti-American, and for almost all of his 50 years he's been a pacifist.

UNTIL ISIS. He looks at ISIS and sees Hitler. He says that none of the stuff about America butting in applies to ISIS -- ISIS kills peace workers from neutral countries. ISIS kills fellow Muslims. ISIS kills everyone who isn't ISIS. They are war criminals in every sense of the word, targeting civilians, raping, enslaving, committing genocide... If they are not stopped they will continue their conquest of the World. Since the advent of ISIS, he has stopped being a pacifist, because he realized it's either fight back or the world comes under ISIS domination.

 

[Open Heart]

Really?

Really. I've read it for myself. I've read the opinions of scholars, including studying it with Jews, who are experts at the Law, and I have prayed over it. Despite my prolife views, this particular scripture only requires a fine for the death of a fetus.

 

[RDKirk]

I wasn't discussing the US. I was discussing an example of a Just War. Stay on topic.

Actually, as a teacher, if two of my kids got into a fight, I always found out who threw the first punch. That was the kid I sent to the office. I also found out WHY the first punch was thrown, so that if any teasing or bullying preceded it, I would act on that, calling parents or whatever needed to be done.

My rule with my own kids was this: don't you ever EVER throw the first punch, or you'll be scrubbing floors and toilets til your fingers are sore. But if someone starts a fight with you, you finish the fight. And indeed, sometimes that would happen, and the school would suspend them a day for fighting, even though they didn't start it and were only defending themselves, and I'd take them out to a movie.

Well, in the schools around me, there is an absolute "no tolerance" policy that gives teachers no such volition. Both children would be suspended or expelled.

And in fact, Christ's policy is also "no tolerance."

"He who lives by the sword will die by the sword."

The paladin's fate is ultimately the same as the villain's.

 

[RDKirk]

I have a brother who is a political activist and an anarchist. You've probably even seen him on the news. He's a Political Science PhD who is very anti-American, and for almost all of his 50 years he's been a pacifist.

UNTIL ISIS. He looks at ISIS and sees Hitler. He says that none of the stuff about America butting in applies to ISIS -- ISIS kills peace workers from neutral countries. ISIS kills fellow Muslims. ISIS kills everyone who isn't ISIS. They are war criminals in every sense of the word, targeting civilians, raping, enslaving, committing genocide... If they are not stopped they will continue their conquest of the World. Since the advent of ISIS, he has stopped being a pacifist, because he realized it's either fight back or the world comes under ISIS domination.

ISIS is not a thing, you know. ISIS is men, and each one was born and lived a life and came to his place just as your brother has come to his place.

The West has has an indelible hand in bringing those men to their place. You said before:

I also found out WHY the first punch was thrown, so that if any teasing or bullying preceded it, I would act on that, calling parents or whatever needed to be done.

But see, the parents of the teaser and the bully never see that in their own child, and don't believe it when told.

I've had an opportunity to browse the CIA library. The US has no clean hands.

 

[Open Heart]

Well, in the schools around me, there is an absolute "no tolerance" policy that gives teachers no such volition. Both children would be suspended or expelled.

It has certainly become more common. But as someone who has been an insider in the schools, I can tell you that it has nothing to do with moral idealism and everything with being too lazy to try to figure out who is at fault when you are getting different stories from different people.

I suspect this laziness is actually the source of the new morality. People throwing up their hands and saying, "Who can figure out this mess. To heck with both countries." It's a morally reprehensible position to take. It punishes both the victim and the bully.

 

[Open Heart]

ISIS is not a thing, you know. ISIS is men

ISIS is an organization. It is a group. The men in it are merely its parts. It has a life of its own. It does not reach out to radicals. Rather it reaches out to every sunni Muslim, and recruits and radicalizes simultaneously, making terrorists out of men who were not. With its websites and videos it inspire people far out of its reach to become other than they were.

 

[MoonlessNight]

• Ending someone's life also ends their chance of getting saved.

Aquinas argued that for many people, facing down death would cause them to reevaluate their life and thus possibly confess their sins and ask God for forgiveness, but without the imminent threat of death, they would not and would thus eventually die without seeking God's mercy. It's not as if the older you are the more likely you are to give yourself over to God, there are plenty of evil people who died of old age without ever repenting.

Of course, this isn't to say that threatening someone with death merely in the hopes that they will repent is justified in and of itself, but that's not what the death penalty is. The death penalty is the execution of a deserved punishment by a proper authority, which leads us to the next point:

• It's God's right to avenge.

Indeed, but the death penalty is not vengeance, it is punishment. And in Mosaic law, God did allow the proper authorities to carry out the sentence of death for many offenses. The death penalty should not be about settling personal grudges or seeking emotional fulfillment and the Church has always opposed its use for those reasons. But if it is a deserved punishment carried out by a legitimate authority, the Church has allowed its use, especially in cases where it additionally protects the common good.

The person will experience eternal damnation if they don't have salvation.

Hence why it is our duty to give them every chance to repent before the execution and to care for their spiritual needs. But ultimately the final judgment is God's alone, and that is true whether someone dies in a sick bed or at the gallows. We can never be sure what the judgment is. It may very well be that those condemned to death are often forgiven by God. It could also be that those who are sentenced to life in prison often do not seek forgiveness. We have no way of knowing which path will more likely lead someone to repentance and salvation, so as heartless as it may seem to say it, the decision of whether or not to execute someone cannot depend on the state of that person's soul, since we do not and cannot know that.

I do not wish to get drawn into this debate.

Posting an argument against the death penalty in the middle of an active debate on the topic is pretty strange way to avoid getting involved.

 

[MoonlessNight]

I'm not trying to make you uncomfortable; I realize good people can have different opinions on this. But how do you reconcile your opinion with the concept of justice? Justice being a life for a life. Please note that I'm only an advocate of the death penalty in cases of aggravated murder where there is NO doubt of guilt, ie a confession or 12 bodies buried in their back yard...

Justice must be tempered with mercy.

The entire code of Mosaic law was just. Indeed, as a code of law directly from God, it is perhaps the most just code of laws ever written. Yet Jesus was clear (such as when he saved the woman from being stoned) that even so it should not always be carried out to the full extent that it could be.

Thus there is nothing inconsistent in recognizing that the death penalty is deserved in some case or other while simultaneously arguing that it should not be used in that case. Mercy is precisely the decision to not carry out a just punishment, after all.

That being said, the care of the common good is important enough that I would say that it is an immoral act not to execute someone who would continue his crimes, provided he already deserves death and you are the proper authority to execute him. The argument now hinges around whether we actually have reached the point where we can protect society from the most violent criminals without killing them, in which case whether to be merciful or not becomes a pressing question. (Complicating the matter is the fact that I don't think that we really can in the most extreme cases. At best we can protect people outside of the prisons, but prisoners and guards should still be protected by the common good. Yet at the same time I recognize that it is possible to safely detain many more people today than it would have been, for example, in the eighteenth century.)