So then, it is now time to follow up on my post on pro-life rhetoric and warfare. I am happy with what I said, but more certainly needs to be said.
I made a distinction between jus ad bellum and jus in bello. The first has to do with the reasons for going to war, which the average citizen is usually not in a position to evaluate. The ones making the decision answer to God for what they do. They do not answer to a man at a peace rally grumbling about genocide in the Middle East, when that same man would not be able to find Iraq on an unmarked map.
Whether something is a legitimate casus belli is something that depends entirely on the facts on the ground. From the sinking of the Maine, to Pearl Harbor, to 9-11, everything rides on what actually happened. And having opinions about what actually happened is not the same thing as knowing. So if the people who represent you go to war over an incident, it is the responsibility of the citizen to go to war as well.
Occasionally there will be instances where the incident is so manifestly cooked up, such that everyone knows that it was simply a pretext for war, and this means that resistance on the part of Christians becomes morally obligatory. This could apply to an ad bellum situation (Canada provoked us by by growing too many pine trees), or to an open strategy for the conduct of war itself that was profoundly immoral. An actual instance of the latter was the Cold War doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction.
As a matter of historical interest, it was Reagan who attempted to move us away from that particular immorality by proposing his “Star Wars” initiative — developing a defensive missile system. Instead of threatening to kill millions of their civilians if they launched against millions of our civilians, a defensive missile system should be the kind of weapons expenditure that everyone could get behind. A pacifist could, without contradiction, wear Kevlar.
Now one of the things that we have forgotten, and which in the age of social media we desperately need to recover, is the dictum that in warfare the first casualty is the truth. Atrocity stories, told in every direction, are not a new thing.
This why to draw a moral equivalence between the carnage of abortion and the carnage of warfare is so shortsighted. With abortion, our judges have determined in their august wisdom that an innocent child is a legitimate target. There is no dispute over whether abortion is intended to terminate a pregnancy. We are a guilty people, confronted with this central bloody fact. The CMP videos brought us face to face with what an appalling people we are.
But when you see the body of a child pulled from the rubble in some city in Syria, however heart-wrenching the picture is, you still don’t know what happened. You don’t know who did that, or why. And part of the reason you don’t know why is that lying about such things is old tech warfare. Atrocity stories, many of them entirely false, are as common as the bombs are. Cameras are weapons. They reveal true atrocities, and they lie about fake ones.
Make this very practical. Assume for a moment that you are an elder in a church here in the United States. Your church is in the same town as a huge air base. Suppose then that a local abortionist started coming to your church, and he (inexplicably) presented himself for membership. You would explain to him that this would not be possible unless he repented and abandoned his profession. Of course you would want to win him, but you would not adjust your church’s standards on murder in order to “bring him along.” That is one scenario.
Now suppose that a pilot stationed at the air base presented himself for membership. The kind of plane he flies is integral to the missions that occasionally blow up terrorist bigwigs. He has done one tour over there already, and would be more than willing to go there again. What do you do now? The answer needs to be it depends. Wise elders would go over with him what rules of engagement he operates under, what his personal convictions and standards are, when he would disobey direct orders that were immoral, and so on. Then they would make a decision, one which could go either way.
The fact that you would treat the abortionist and the pilot differently (absolutely not and it depends) makes the only point I am making. You cannot flatten the distinction between them. To do so is to abandon the Christian moral tradition. There have been many fine Christians who have been warriors. Moreover, they have been warriors in wars where appalling things were done, frequently by both sides. But this is glaringly different from the abortionist, who cannot be a fine Christian, and who goes to work in order to do appalling things all day, every day, 9 to 5.
To refuse to make this distinction is to reveal that when the Christian moral tradition was abandoned, it was replaced by something else, which is to say, one of the ideologies of an already ideological age.
“A pacifist could, without contradiction, wear Kevlar.” This is brilliant! The NRA should start a campaign for gun rights opponents that recognizes that innocent people die every day at the hand of some criminal with a gun but instead of owning a gun, they could wear Kevlar vests to give them a fighting chance to survive. Win/win. Instead of protesting legitimate gun ownership by law abiding citizens, they could join forces and no longer protest guns but advocate protective clothing. I’m not sure I know any liberal gun haters that I would want to have a gun anyway but I… Read more »
Cameras are weapons is worth repeating. What I like here is that yu are describing when NOT to support the troops. You need to develop that more because of the propaganda that we always here about support the troops.
Well, just to complicate the issue, there is this thing called having the moral upper hand. Congress hasn’t formally declared war since WW2, so speaking legally or technically, apparently our leaders have never had the authority or the moral justification to declare war since. Therefore all our wars beyond WW2 have been non wars, peacekeeping missions, policing actions, etc. Are citizens required to support wars our leaders won’t even take responsibility for? I don’t know. Which brings me to abortion and the sticky issue between men and women. If men would step into their authority and refuse to create unwanted… Read more »
You know, if the death penalty were kept for adulterers, what do you think would happen to the number of men willing to impregnate women without commitment?
Or if any of the OT laws surrounding such issues were kept–what then?
High time someone mentioned this. The woman doesn’t get pregnant all by herself, after all.
“But this is glaringly different from the abortionist, who cannot be a fine Christian, and who goes to work in order to do appalling things all day.”
Right, but we Christians sure do like to point fingers at homosexuals while ignoring the gossips, condemning the abortionists while praising the Trumps, endlessly blathering on as if sin were all about a hierarchy, as if we can just offer up a plea bargain, see, at least we are not like those kind of people…
The Christian moral tradition was abandoned when the hypocrisy was spotted.
Who is praising Trump?
Exactly. The opposite is happening. Christian “leaders” who never spoke up about abortion or the homosexual onlslaught suddenly wake up from a 20-year slumber to write shallow, sanctimonious blogs and editorials condemning Trump. Clinton, Obama and the mushy Neo-Cons who ran against them weren’t worth mentioning, but Trump just forced them out of apolitical land.
I mentioned this in an older thread, but it’s a worthy read as far as neo-cons, war and Trump (and it doesn’t have a pro-Trump stance): https://www.lewrockwell.com/2016/03/thomas-woods/theyre-lying-hate-trump/
A. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=780&v=Gwpt6Quq5kg
Nobody is proud of gossip. Everyone, Christian or not, thinks it’s wrong. They just think they have an exception for *this one* particularly stupid thing someone did. There is no gossip lobby, fighting to make it a crime to rebuke gossiping. It makes much more sense for Christians to speak in the secular world about things the secular world doesn’t already agree with.
Perhaps that’s because abortion and homosexuality are (1) worse than gossip, and (2) are two of the most glaring and highhanded and destructive sins of our era. Most Christians I know would be happy to never have to talk about these subjects again, as they are both extremely unpleasant. But we are forced to have to deal with them because they are the signal sins of our time.
It is wrong to accuse Christians generally of hypocrisy simply because they are not defending the city at a place where it is not being attacked.
But not minimizing abortion to the level of gossip makes us look unloving to feminists!!
EDIT
No, it’s not that at all. It’s that we have the power and the authority to completely dismantle the feminist argument, but instead of doing that, we tend to just provide them more ammunition to fuel their rebellion.
But ME, 1) nobody is saying that gossip and Trump aren’t sinful–even if Trump supporters are willing to look past such for political reasons, they still admit that he is sinful. 2) nobody thinks that men aren’t culpable for fornication, adultery, and whatever other part they have in abortion — in fact in the evangelical world, women are almost always framed as a/the victim of abortion and men are always to blame. Taking up the particular taunts you have against the pro-life movement is not doing anything to disarm or dismantle the feminist argument. Sure, claiming that women shouldn’t be… Read more »
Wesley, well said. And ME, I certainly agree that men should own up to their own sins, leading the way in this as in other areas. But one way men can “dismantle the feminist argument” (a goal we share) is by fighting the easy cowardice of neglecting to call women out on their sins. After all, “equal treatment” would seem to demand this.
“Sure, claiming that women shouldn’t be shown to be culpable unless a man is also shown to be culpable indirectly illustrates the utter incoherence and inherent contradiction of feminism–anything a woman *does* or *is* is always dependent upon some action of a man or how that man views said woman” You are right. I do believe that. I would hope you would at least acknowledge the truth of that statement when it comes to something like fornication? There is a certain gender symbiosis required in order to fornicate, yes? Many things in life are like that, they often involve symbiosis… Read more »
NOT which, but whether — isn’t that the mantra you taught us, pastor?
If both the abortionist and pilot show up, baptized Christians as they are — you don’t have a choice WHICH to receive as members.
They both ARE members.
You receive them as such, then decide WHETHER you’re going to excommunicate one or the other, or both.
Regarding cameras: I remember reading in Malcom Muggeridge something like “It’s not that the camera can lie. The camera always lies.”
Edit: I remember reading this in Muggeridge, but the interwebz give me no source at all for such a quote.
Here is a good example of the camera lying
What do you mean by the “Christian moral tradition”? Many of the Early Church Fathers (Lactantius, Origen and Tertullian, especially) were against Christian participation in war. Origen was against Christians killing at all, even guilty criminals. And there is a long standing Christian tradition of pacifism, opposition to the death penalty, and condemnation of war regardless of the rationale. Is there an established tradition that says Christian participation in war might be just depending on the circumstances?
Here is more than a tradition. Here is God’s Word, as revealed by an Apostle, who obeyed governing authority when it was godly to do so, and who did not obey governing authority when the authority was ungodly in particular actions. Romans13 Let everyone be subject to the governing authorities, for there is no authority except that which God has established. The authorities that exist have been established by God. 2 Consequently, whoever rebels against the authority is rebelling against what God has instituted, and those who do so will bring judgment on themselves. 3 For rulers hold no terror… Read more »
You should probably quote that in the actual context of Romans 12:9-13:10, which is all about loving your neighbor, serving your enemy, and leaving room for the wrath of God rather than taking part in violent judgment yourself. It was probably written to the church in Rome in 57, in the context of a Roman government which had just persecuted Jewish Christians (banishing all Jews and Jewish Christians from the city from 49-54), was in the process of leveling taxes against the Christians for which some were considering rebellion, and which was just about to launch a dramatic persecution of… Read more »
“It has nothing whatsoever to do with us Christians taking up arms for that gov’t ” The text does not create this exception that you impose. Like you say, even the unredeemed are under God’s control, even unredeemed armies. Just so you understand , I can see how being a conscientious objector, a military volunteer or being a draftee could all be godly responses to government involved conflicts. We both know who is Lord over them. It’s ok to hate evil, just like it’s ok to cling to what is good. Both can be done at the same time, by… Read more »
I’m not the one imposing an exception. Romans 12:9-13:10 is about Christian conduct being based around loving one’s neighbor, doing no evil, doing good instead of harm to enemies, not taking vengeance into our own hands, leaving room for God’s wrath, and even being willing to submit to the government. There’s no need for me to make any “exception”…I think that Christians should behave in the same manner in all circumstances, all positions. You, though, seem to think that a Christian in government doesn’t need to leave room for God’s wrath, love his enemy like a neighbor, and give him… Read more »
King David was a man of blood and a man after Gods own heart. Tricky combination huh?????
King David was also a murderer, an adulterer, a polygamist, a slaveowner, a deceiver, an enabler of his incestfully rapist son, and was sinfully proud of his military’s size.
And a man after God’s own heart.
That doesn’t make any of those things clean for Christians. It does show that we are all committ faults, and that before Christ died for our sins, our hearts of stone were turned to hearts of flesh, and the Holy Spirit imbued our lives, living the kind of life Christ calls us to was literally not humanly possible.
So if you were a godly, able bodied young American man in 1941, would you join the US Military to fight evil forces, or would you go conscientious objector? Either way would be a way to submit to governing authorities , as the Word requires. In a similar vein, like it or not, the taxes we pay now, finance both the good and the bad actions of our government.
That guy in the bible said “render into Caesar what is Caesar’s, and unto God what is Gods”. I bet we are both doing this!????????
Were the evil forces the Germans and Japanese we were fighting or the Soviets and Chinese we were assisting? Or was it the president who wanted so badly (against his own military advice) to drop a couple nuclear bombs on citizens of an already-defeated nation? I think Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn’s words on that topic are relevant. Though don’t take that as me not realizing that horrendously, almost unthinkably evil things were being done during WW2. I don’t think US military and conscientious objector are the only two choices. If I was the same person with the same convictions I have now,… Read more »
So Andre and Varian disobeyed governing authorities when such was the godly thing to do!
J’, for all of your talk, the page we are on is not all that different!???? And all within the moral tradition of war that Wilson talks about here!
????
All forces involved in ww2 were God’s instruments.
Nice quotes, but this has little to do with the morality of killing and with the Christian moral tradition Doug mentions. Doug wisely points out that despite Paul’s advice there are times when it is indeed our obligation as believers to reject the commands of those above us. My point is about moral tradition. There is a strong moral tradition in Christianity that rejects killing of any kind. I’m wondering what moral tradition involving war and killing Doug is referring to.
Romans 13:4 For the one in authority is God’s servant for your good. But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer. 5 Therefore, it is necessary to submit to the authorities, not only because of possible punishment but also as a matter of conscience. Luke 3:13-15 13 “Don’t collect any more than you are required to,” he told them. 14 Then some soldiers asked him, “And what should we do?” He replied, “Don’t extort money and don’t accuse… Read more »
So John the Baptist tells soldiers not to take money by force, which is addressing corruption common among both soldiers and tax collectors. John does not tell them to stop being soldiers or tax collectors. However, this does not in itself make the argument that Christians can and should kill. The text has nothing to do with killing. We may make assumptions and inferences, but that’s the best they are. Does John say anything about killing? He doesn’t say anything on either side of the issue. The passage from Romans is your best argument, for sure, as Paul does has… Read more »
“Does John say anything about killing? He doesn’t say anything on either side of the issue.” Well Spike-arino, what does the Word say about “wrath”? “But if you do wrong, be afraid, for rulers do not bear the sword for no reason. They are God’s servants, agents of wrath to bring punishment on the wrongdoer.” Just a joke here Spike. What do you think wrath is? Cake with no ice cream? ; – ) Acts 12 is an example of lethal wrath in the New testament: ” 23 Immediately, because Herod did not give praise to God, an angel of… Read more »
Your focus on “wrath” is very apt. There are 37 mentions of wrath in the New Testament. As far as I can tell, 35 of those refer to the wrath of God and two refer to our own need to flee from wrath. “Let all bitterness and wrath and anger and clamor and slander be put away from you, with all malice, and be kind to one another, tenderhearted, forgiving one another, as God in Christ forgave you.” “In these you once walked, when you lived in them. But now put them all away: anger, wrath, malice, slander, and foul… Read more »
Government is not an entity separate from godly action. The authorities are servants of God. That’s what the Word says. If godly Christians are in government , they, especially must,”bear the sword” justly. For instance Paul evangelized and baptized his Jailer. The jailer was still a jailer the next day, albeit a godly jailer.
I bet he was a better jailer for it.
The centurion was a godly authority before he even met Jesus in person.
So it is just not correct to say that “government is an entity separate from godly action”. The government rests on Christ’s shoulders .
“But to your larger point Jesus demonstrates a moral tradition of Justice in both the old and new testaments.” Okay. Let’s take this at face value. There are times in the OT when God smites evildoers, via human hands or divine. But in all of those instances, the wrath of God is clearly leveled out by God himself, with his own pronouncements making clear who he wants killed. Sometimes, however, the actual guilt of the individuals is not clear to the reader. In the case of Ai, for example, do all of the children and women deserve to die? Is… Read more »
“Your argument only works when we know, clearly, that we are serving as God’s ministers of justice and not man’s. The question is: how do we know?” Consider this: Jeremiah 25:9 I will summon all the peoples of the north and my servant Nebuchadnezzar king of Babylon,” declares theLord, “and I will bring them against this land and its inhabitants and against all the surrounding nations. I will completely destroy them and make them an object of horror and scorn, and an everlasting ruin. Did God speak clearly and directly to “all the peoples of the north” and Nebuchadnezzar to… Read more »
Still, your example from Jeremiah contains proof that God wanted this. Do we have anything similar for the actions of our own country? Yes, we can agree that God’s ways are above our ways. But the Bible contains example after example of proof that God wanted these things to happen. We don’t have such proof for our own actions. You see the problem?
For us , the Word is history, some written for record after the fact, and some written prophetically before the fact. I don’t think Nebuchadnezzar read Jeremiah before he conquered Israel. We don’t know if God told him to, directly. To me, this means that in real time , many do not “have proof” that their actions are specifically Ordained. In our time, my experience is that the Word, the Spirit and our submission to God tug at our hearts, to be in Gods will, even as we have no direct knowledge of His will at the time. That being… Read more »
“To me, this means that in real time , many do not “have proof” that their actions are specifically Ordained”. But this is a huge problem if you’re talking about the Christian moral “justness” of killing. It’s easy to point back to the Bible and say that God wanted these deaths to occur. We can’t do the same thing for ourselves. Yes, we need to trust in God, but the simple truth is that we will never, in this life, have the kind of confirmation that we see in the Bible for these kinds of acts. You can rationalize it… Read more »
On the other hand, God is not just sitting somewhere doing nothing. He is in control of everything we are not in control of.
In fact Spike, (and this is a joke with a point) He is keeping you, from doing anything bad to me right now ! ????????
(And everyone else too!)
I’m not sure that the Bible really supports your underlying notion that God controls our actions in the way you are describing.
“Are not two sparrows sold for s penny? Yet not one of them falls to the ground outside you Father’s care.”
Spike babe, God’s got us covered, and those sparrows too!
What can we say ? The Guy (God) has a lot of game!????????????
Hmm. Going to have to disagree with your application of that verse. Very little to do with God controlling our actions. Very little in the entire Bible to suggest that God actually controls our actions. And very little in “Christian moral tradition” either. I’m fact, quite the opposite. You might want to reconsider your conception of “the Guy” and how he operates.
Matthew 10:28-30 (RSV) 28 And do not fear those who kill the body but cannot kill the soul; rather fear him who can destroy both soul and body in hell.[a] 29 Are not two sparrows sold for a penny? And not one of them will fall to the ground without your Father’s will. 30 But even the hairs of your head are all numbered. John 15:4-6 (NIV) 4 Remain in me, as I also remain in you. No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me.… Read more »
All right, well we are clearly at odds. I don’t see your verses that you’ve cited as demonstrating that God controls our actions to the extent that we might be considered to be administers of divine wrath. Foreknowledge and predestination are not about individual actions. They are about salvation. I don’t need to provide Scripture that shows that God does NOT control our individual actions because the burden of proof is on your end of the argument, not mine. I can’t argue from silence. You are claiming that God controls our actions in order to achieve some kind of divine… Read more »
Spike-asaurus, we are not at odds. The Word keeps saying what you keep insisting it does not say. You offer your opinion as a conclusion, with no supporting construction from the Word. In 2 Kings below, Gods says He long ago planned Sennacherib, king of Assyria’s personal actions, as an instrument of wrath on nations serving idols. Threat of conquest by that king also spooks Israel back into obediance. Read the whole chapter. it refutes everything you say on this topic. How about if you cite just one Biblical narrative to support your position? ; – ) 2 Kings 19… Read more »
Accept that when God actually brings judgment on Sennacherib, it is in the form of the Angel of the Lord killing 185,000 Assyrians. And, later, two of Sennacherib’s sons kill him with a sword. Now, we do read about the death by sword that God “will have him cut down”, which might lead us to believe that God makes his two sons kill him. But verse 37 says nothing about this divine compulsion. As I’m sure you know, tradition holds that the author of Kings was Jeremiah and the books would have been written around the mid 500s BC. Sennacherib’s… Read more »
Spike-a-rino: “You are claiming that God controls our actions in order to achieve some kind of divine justice. Where do we see this specifically in Scripture? Show me some actual cases where this has happened.” I keep showing you, from the Word, and you keep “moving the goal posts”. Spike, here is the “Goal post” that won’t move: ” 2 Kings 19:25 “‘Have you not heard? Long ago I ordained it. In days of old I planned it; now I have brought it to pass, that you have turned fortified cities into piles of stone. The Word says this is… Read more »
I’m not sure I’m the one with a reading problem. I clearly pointed out that God wiped out 185,000 soldiers. I am not disputing that the Bible often shows God killing evil doers. I am also not disputing that there is prophetic material in the Bible, all of which quite obviously paints a picture of a God that knows what is going to happen and in some cases arranges it. What I am disputing is that the Bible contains sufficient evidence to support your position that God uses people like me and you to deliver his wrath to evildoers. There… Read more »
My argument remains: the Bible does not sufficiently support the idea
that God uses people like you and me (under the authority of
governments) to administer wrath to evildoers.The Bible is filled with examples of God killing people. And it also
shows us times when God specifically tells people to kill others, but it
rarely (if ever) shows men compelled to kill without the actors knowing
about it via a divine directive or prophecy (after the fact or not)
Phineas?
Not really. Phineas is praised by God because he “was as zealous for my honor among them as I am.” In other words, God praises Phineas because he took matters into his own hands. The text, however, does not say that God WANTED Phineas, specifically, to do what he did. It could have been anyone, and there may have even been other ways to purify the community besides driving a spear through two people. Whatever the case, Phineas is praised because of his passion for righteousness, but there is no evidence that God was USING him as an instrument of… Read more »
You are looking for a commandment or law. Do yo not know the Holy Spirit?
C.S. Lewis, in Perelandra had his character Ransom wrestle with coming to terms with the fact that it was his moral duty to kill the un-man.
I know the Catholics state that it is imperative to defend the innocent with lethal force and a sin not to. The scenario of initiating a kill is easy to derive from there.
I’m not denying that there may be times when it is moral to kill–that our faith might warrant violence to protect the innocent from evil. But this would be a choice made by humans based on our understanding of Christian responsibility. All we could do is hope that our understanding of Christian responsibility and the justness of killing is correct. The Bible itself does not give us much to work with in this regard. Take your example of Phineas. Is this the way WE are to act? Did God want him to drive a spear through these two sinners? Does… Read more »
Hi Spike, Consider that God is teaching us. If you have ever taught a student, you know that sometimes the correct thing to do is to remain silent and let the student come to his own conclusion. The goal of teaching is to teach students not to need your instruction anymore. You are a successful teacher when you accomplish this. the morality of taking a life will always be a gray area. Not to God it isn’t. Admittedly it seems weird to us (The man who was struck dead for reaching out to steady the ark of the covenant, for… Read more »
I appreciate what you are saying. Again, if God decides to strike someone dead for touching the ark, that’s one thing. But if I decide to strike someone dead in my zeal because they violate the sanctity of Holiness, that is a different matter entirely. Indeed, a mature Christian moral stance may require some difficult actions in order to be true to our faith. Kierkegaard deals with this in Fear and Trembling, when he discusses Abraham and his willingness to take a leap of faith and do (or plan to do) something that was clearly immoral, even to God’s own… Read more »
Hi Spike, I don’t share your fear, in that, what you see as permanently gray, I know God has ways of bringing clarity to the fore. It is like the call to salvation, before we accept that God is real, we work in ourselves with all the possibilities, pluses, minuses, the real possibility that we are completely nuts… until we realize that we know that He is real and that it up to us to choose Him or reject Him. We know, without seeing, without hearing that He is real. The same process plays out in moral questions and in… Read more »
God said: Isaiah 10: “Woe to the Assyrian, the rod of my anger, in whose hand is the club of my wrath! 6 I send him against a godless nation, I dispatch him against a people who anger me, to seize loot and snatch plunder, and to trample them down like mud in the streets.7 But this is not what he intends, this is not what he has in mind;” Spike-a-rino said: “What I am disputing is that the Bible contains sufficient evidence to support your position that God uses people like me and you to deliver his wrath to… Read more »
Overdue for the next topic, but let me take issue–one last time–with two things that you say here. First, I didn’t read Wilson’s response to Jory Micah, but are you (and is Doug) implying that a careful study of the meaning of texts is not grounds for an argument? If your position is based on a misreading or misunderstanding of Ephesians 5, then it is absolutely an argument to attack your position since it is based on a flawed interpretation. You are suggesting otherwise? Second, the use of “sufficient” is also an important word in this discussion. We are talking… Read more »
Let’s hope we both think that God’s Grace is “sufficient” for us!????????
“We don’t have to know God’s will to be part of it.”
Indeed: “Against a godless nation I send him, and against the people of my wrath I command him…But he does not so intend, and his heart does not so think…”
Well, looking to the Word, instead of our own opinion removes a lot of “mystery” from things doesn’t it?!
????????????????
You have no evidence that they hadn’t taken the man, or that the man hadn’t already been stoned, or that he had escaped….etc. Even if they had let him go…how would it be just to release one law-breaker just because the other hadn’t been apprehended? That’s nowhere in the Law. And Jesus doesn’t say one word about “you need to get the man first” when they ask him what to do. The Pharisees very specifically asked him what they should do – so the door was open for him to specify if they were doing anything wrong. Yet he didn’t….except… Read more »
J’, I am not sure what our disagreement is. It is not speculation to say that the technical requirements of the law, for an execution were not met by that lynch mob. David and Bathsheba should have been stoned as well, but God made a different call.
I have never killed anyone. I hope I never do. I do allow that there are circumstances where killing someone would not be immoral or wrong. Is this our difference?
I just realized that, if we took your interpretation seriously, it might still lead to a banning of the death penalty. Because we very clearly don’t kill all murderers. The vast majority of murderers in America get off without a death sentence, especially virtually all murderers who have enough money to get a decent lawyer, especially the large majority of White murderers, especially virtually all murderers (of any race) who kill a Black person. So if the issue is that unfair application of the sentence dictates that no one should get the sentence…then it still bears relevance today. Of course,… Read more »
Most cultures, including the Levitical culture had gradations of justice. We don’t execute people for spitting. We don’t subdue every enemy in a war. Sounds good to me, and I think reflects common grace.????
The Catholic church has an established tradition that a war is just only when four conditions are met. Quoting from the official catechism, these are: “1. the damage inflicted by the aggressor on the nation or community of nations must be lasting, grave, and certain; 2. all other means of putting an end to it must have been shown to be impractical or ineffective; 3. there must be serious prospects of success; 4. the use of arms must not produce evils and disorders graver than the evil to be eliminated. The power of modern means of destruction weighs very heavily… Read more »
Okay, but is this what Doug means by Christian moral tradition?
“The fact that you would treat the abortionist and the pilot differently (absolutely not and it depends) makes the only point I am making.” Yes, but how does one treat the pilot *of* the abortionist? “The christians, about this time, upon mature consideration, thought it unlawful to bear arms under a heathen emperor.” Fox’s Book of Martyrs (Kindle Version), Chapter II. The Ten Primitive Persecutions, Section: The Tenth Persecution under Diocletian, A.D. 303.
This post was quite helpful and well-reasoned. Sadly, the people it was aimed at (moral equivalency libertarians) are unlikely to be persuaded because, as a tribe, they have proven themselves quite immune from persuasion. Their absurdly “consistent” libertarian ideology is the security blanket they take to sleep with them every night. Not only is it their constant companion, whether sleeping or waking, it assures them that they are different, morally enlightened, smarter and more holy than all the EEEEVVVVIIILLLL Christian conservatives and “Pawns of the JOOOZZZ” who are “warmongers.” Their pyschological attachment to feeling superior to other people is too… Read more »
None of the libertarians I read believe in Jewish conspiracy theories. Your whole post was nothing more than a classic straw man.
As for your last sentence, I’ve seen countless examples of that among many groups: neo-cons, Reformed Christians, SJWs, etc.