When we try to identify the most "humane" forms of execution, are we respecting other human beings, or are we trying to do what will least offend everyone who opposes the death penalty? However, I think it's possible that the state is allowed to be more "merciful" than the OT law prescribes, as long as it doesn't harm victims. I wonder if a quick execution is righteous mercy? Or does it depend on the situation and whether the criminal is penitent? I don't know how to begin answering this question, really.

But if, as Backwoods and I agreed earlier, stoning is intended to display the reality of sin to the community, maybe it is better. Maybe it offends us because we just don't understand how bad sin is.

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Evie B.
Cambridge, Massachusetts
Attending Park Street Church, Boston

"Remember not the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I am doing a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it? I will make a way in the wilderness and rivers in the desert." --Isaiah 43:18-19 (ESV)

Evie: Not sure, you might have a point.

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Pergamum


"If a commission by an earthly king is considered a honor, how can a commission by a Heavenly King be considered a sacrifice?"
-- David Livingstone

A sad case of poor reasoning. Rutherford can't have it both ways. On one hand, he wants to argue from the judicials for certain things; on others, he wants to defy them. Also, I have read several excepts from the free disputation against pretended liberty of conscience to the opposite effect. For instance:

This contradicts your quotations, and also affirms Pergy's hanging argument

I see your Rutherford; you want to raise me a Gillespie?

Cheers,

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Adam Brink, Livermore, California
Grace Church of Pleasanton, PCA

He who was punishable by death under the judicial law, is punishable by death still; and he who was not punished by death then, is not to be punished by death now.

I guess John Frame has folded this hand?

Thank you! I also agree with your earlier point that one of the purposes of execution in the OT law was to purify God's people. God's people is now the church, not a political state, and purification is accomplished through excommunication. Is it as necessary for a political state that isn't synonymous with God's people to clear the unrighteous out of the land? I really don't think so -- the unchurched members of a secular state are not even purportedly God's people. Their sin offends His righteousness, but since they do not represent Him and are not set apart to Him, maybe their behavior is less of an affront. (On the other hand, I am thinking about the command for the Israelites to kill the unrighteous pagans in the land.)

I also question whether the didactic purpose of execution is as important now that the church, distinct from the state, is responsible for theological teaching. I am certain that the OT law has something to show us today about justice, but of course the change in application now that the state is no longer a gatekeeper of God's people is the confusing part.

I agree that Rutherford and Gillespie are no theonomists, so of course they may appear inconsistent to some.

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Chris Coldwell, Lakewood Presbyterian Church (PCA), Member
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So, Chris, what do you think the proper punishment is for a man who rapes and kills a 4 year old girl? Please give the punishment, and the method of carrying it out, and your reasoning.

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Tim Vaughan, 48 years old, member Redeemer OPC, Santa Maria CA.

It is my understanding that even in the Old Testament the church and state were separate jurisdictions. Remember, Uzziah was condemned for burning incense (2 Ch. 26)?

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Brian Eschen
Ruling Elder, PCA
Pleasanton, California

If you don't like the term theonomist, then Rutherford and Gillespie would be called what? They both acknowledge the death penalty for idolatry proselytization, sodomy, adultery, and other issues directly related to the Mosaic Judicials. If that is not theonomy, then I need you to do some detailed explanation.

All I was stating was that Rutherford is not a consistent reasoner on these issues. Now he's a theonomist; now he's not. However, the overall thrust of his thought is theonomic from start to finish. This is the service that modern theonomists have done to their forbears: they have systematized and attempted to root out inconsistencies from the basic puritan socio-political ideology. Theonomy is just covenant theology applied to one particular area of thought. Just as infant baptism is covenant theology applied to a different area of thought. If someone said in his works, "Our children are included with us in the visible church", and then said "Our children are vipers and diapers, and should not be baptized", where should one fall. I see Rutherford as doing just that. Anywho, I'll get off of my

Cheers,

Let's get back to this - I am intrigued.


Also, I want to hear why God did not kill people the most "humane" way in the OT. Stoning seems brutal in comparison to hanging. I guess God is not obligated to be the most humane. But today in our society, hanging seems a better choice for the death penalty than bludgeoning someone to death with dull objects. Why?

Adam:

Regarding the term theonomist:

All of us on the PB SHOULD be theonomic with the little "t" at least. We all agree that God's moral law is eternal. Of course there is "no other standard."

many folks, like me, see a whole lot more discontinuity between the OT and the NT even despite a general tenor of continuity. This means that when we see the term "general equity" this does NOT mean any desire to Christianize the civil state or to apply civil punishments to ecclesiastical offenses, but to apply the moral law drawn from the OT to the New (in the pattern that Paul does in I Cor 5)...

Could that also speak more of different roles with the same jurisdiction -- more of a "separation of powers" system? Either way, in the OT the state governed only those who were within the covenant community, and the same is not true today. But I do see your point and will think about this more.

Morning from the foggy Central Coast.

After sleeping on it (and wishing I were waking up in an area with new species to be discovered every day) it occurs to me that with the different views of continuity that come with the territory of people who range from Baptist to Theonomist and various shades in between, it seems deja vu all over again to spend too much time wrangling about which laws to keep. And now we are peeling away another layer down to what the proper modern criminal penalty is for those laws.

So, I will just ask you if it is at all possible for your view of "humane" to be less humane than God's, even though it goes against the grain you've grown up with.

And to Chris, do you really think that here in modern America whipping as a penalty for stealing is a better punishment than paying restitution, or was this perhaps an area that certain Puritans were culturally myopic?

In Africa I had a klepto in my crew. We finally caught him when he stole a beer from a woman, and as was the practice, I asked him if he wanted me to judge the case or the police. As was the practice, he chose me, and I took three times the value of the beer from his pay, and gave it to the woman in front of the whole farm, while quoting the relevant Scripture. And he went six months before he stole again, and that's a long time for a klepto in Africa.

Pergs, I would think that the penalty of stoning was intended to be bloody and horrific for a purpose that supercedes the need to be humane in that the sight of it impresses upon the witnesses the severity and horror of the sin it punishes. And perhaps that the one receiving the stoning is not deserving of a more humane type of execution. The 'most humane' thing to do would be NOT execute the offender, but that would be one of those tender mercies of the wicked that are cruel. I think the same is true of hanging or beheading of one who deserves stoning. God apparently thinks hanging's too good for them, and requires something more severe.

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Brad
PCA Member
Virginia

Pro 16:33 The lot is cast into the lap; but the whole disposing thereof is of the LORD.

Isa 8:20 To the law and to the testimony: if they speak not according to this word, it is because there is no light in them.

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~Keon Garraway~ Brooklyn, NY Member of Franklin Square OPC

Love for God demonstrated by the love for our children in giving them a God centered education is the only hope for our country. by David Morrow
Pslam 71:20 [Thou], which hast shewed me great and sore troubles, shalt quicken me again, and shalt bring me up again from the depths of the earth.

Tim,

We have disagreed on much recently, but I agree with you here. In many cases there is no distinction made, and all of the above are simply labeled as "sex offenders" whether it's a case of statutory rape as in your example or child rape.

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Chris
Member at Grace Community Baptist Church, Mandeville, LA

Beware of a religion without holdfasts. But if I get a grip upon a doctrine they call me a bigot. Let them do so. Bigotry is a hateful thing, and yet that which is now abused as bigotry is a great virtue, and greatly needed in these frivolous times. I have been inclined lately to start a new denomination, and call it "the Church of the Bigoted." Spurgeon

BUt today, when we do not have the prophets nor the audible voice of God, why would a civil society choose stoning over hanging?

The guillotine was developed to be a more humane form of execution than hanging, and it is, by far. What's your thing about hanging? Why do you stop there, as most civilized people (world wide) think it's barbaric?

Once you leave the standard by claiming it is too harsh, then you can't stop. "Why would a civil society choose the death penalty when a person can be put in jail" "Why should a person be put away for life" ?

I am not advocating that we disband the death penalty. That slippery slope is not that slippery and just because one does not want to see someone die in needlessly painful way does not mean to say that that someone does not want to see the death penalty enacted at all.

But, affirming the death penalty, it seems that we do have an obligation not to make the convicted suffer needlessly.

We could starve prisoners to death too without water or food for the space of a week as captial punishment, but we choose to try to minimize what we commonly call human cruelty.


Maybe the guillotine is a better way than hanging. I use hanging as n example because - if done right - it kills quickly and perhaps with a minimum of pain.



So, does society have an obligation now to kill the convcited in the most humane way that they can think of?