Death Penalty Part 2: Is it Morally Permissible?

If we argue the death penalty is morally permissible what is the basis of our claim? Are we justifying premeditated murder under certain circumstances? If so, is morality relative and subject to circumstance?

Any time any person speaks of what is morally permissible or prohibited (right or wrong) they are making an appeal to an absolute. Think about it! This applies even to the moral relativist who denies that morality is absolute when he makes the absolute statement that morals are relative. The irony of this is that, philosophically speaking, the concept of absolute is the opposite of relative. The question is on what basis can we claim anything to be absolute?

This sense of morality and the concept of absolute come from somewhere. The concept of absolute, philosophically speaking, is the opposite of relative. By definition, absolute means unlimited, unconditional, independent, perfect, or complete. Hence, relative presupposes the existence of absolute if it is to have any meaning at all. Morality, like goodness, is proportionate to our being. Dr. Kreeft’s (Professor of Philosophy, Boston University Philosophy) analogy is a good one when he compares a dog to a man. A dog may run all over the neighborhood trying to mate with every female dog he finds and when the dog returns home we pat him on the head saying “good doggy.” We do not condemn the dog for his promiscuity – it is his nature. However, the same behavior in man is, at the very least, frowned upon by society. Furthermore, if a dog in his nature as a dog could act like a man he would not be a very good man any more than the man who resorts to acting like a dog would be a good man.

The existence of morality itself is an argument for the existence of God. Morals have no basis if God does not exist. On what basis can we individually, or collectively as a society, condemn Hitler’s holocaust of the Jews in Europe during World War II? Call him what you want, but Hitler believed he was right and passed a law to engage in the slaughter of millions of Jews. Hence, if morality reaches its highest form through human law, then we have no absolute or basis on which to condemn Hitler. So, we must ask, if he was wrong to engage in such death and destruction, on what basis can we make such a moral claim?

The point is, whether we admit it or not, we recognize the existence of a moral law which transcends all human law and thought. Universally, every person clearly understands certain behaviors to be moral or immoral regardless of what any human law legislates. Where does this sense of morality originate? It cannot be the result of some theory of macro-evolution because morality has been understood among men from the earliest eons of civilization. If the theory of macro-evolution, a random process over time, explains the presence of moral law, then it falls of its own weight as it does in so many other hypotheses. We have to ask ourselves, how can random produce the absolute unless random inheres within it the absolute? Such reasoning is absurd! Again, that which proves too much proves nothing!

God is the author of absolute morals because He is the only absolute moral being. Moral law is no more random than the man subject to moral law. Hence, all of us are subject to moral law given by the absolute moral God. Therefore, it stands to reason man is the product of (created by) God and not some randomness over time (macro-evolution or some alleged unfolding history of the absolute). The Bible affirms man was created by God in “His image” (Genesis 1:27). That is not to say, man is God or a god but that he has a nature grounded in God’s moral absolute being. For man to act like God, he would not be very good at it. In fact, as history shows, he would be very bad – like a dog, who if he could, would not be a good man anymore than a man is good who acts like a dog. In the same fashion, God the Creator is not a man – He is absolute. It is true that God, through Jesus, became God in the flesh. However, He did not do so to act like man in his sinfulness but to be the ideal man in relation to God. God’s purpose in becoming flesh was to be the absolute sacrifice, in reconciling and redeeming man back to Himself, by means of his finished work of atonement on the cross. (2 Corinthians 5:17-21 more on this later).

Man as a created being grounded in the moral nature of God means man has free-will. God created man knowing man would choose not to recognize and serve Him as the Creator. In the Garden of Eden man chose to rebel against God (Genesis 3:1-7). The penalty for man’s criminal act against God was death as God foretold him it would be if he rebelled (Genesis 2:15-17). It was not God’s purpose in creating man to bring about death in any sense (Genesis 1:26-31). It is clear that sin (violating God’s will) brought about both spiritual and physical consequences. The spiritual consequence of man’s sin is separation from the presence and free access to God as seen in man’s expulsion from the garden. Sin separates us from God – hence, spiritual death (Isaiah 59:1-2). The physical consequence of man’s sin, as evidenced in his disbarment from the tree of life, is death (Genesis 3:22-24).

Death, both spiritually and physically, is the ultimate penalty from which man cannot free himself. Knowing this, God in his great mercy, “dreamed a dream” and “schemed a scheme” whereby man could be free from the pangs of death and live eternally with Him. God’s word of promise and hope for all mankind is given between man’s rebellion and expulsion, as he told Satan of his ultimate defeat saying, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you shall bruise his heel” (Genesis 3:15). God’s promise was to bring one born of the flesh to destroy Satan bringing the ultimate victory over death for mankind. This was accomplished in the “fullness of time” through Jesus Christ “born of the seed of a woman” (God becoming flesh) and “made under the law” (the imperfect sacrificial system of the Israelites) “to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons” (Galatians 4:4-5). It is no wonder the thrill of victory peals out in the words of the Hebrew writer when he declared, “Since therefore the children share in flesh and blood, he himself likewise partook of the same things, that through death he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil, and deliver all those who through fear of death were subject to lifelong slavery” (2:14-15).

Perhaps, this is a lengthy way of getting to the issue of the moral argument for the death penalty but it is not without merit. Death became an intrinsic part of God’s dealing with sin (crime) from the beginning. God valued human life above all that He created because there is an eternal value (absolute) inherent in the life He created and gave to man (Ecclesiastes 3:11 – “he has put eternity into man's heart” – in the very nature of his being). Furthermore, it is by the gift of His Son on the cross that God demonstrates and confirms His love for mankind which He had from the beginning (Romans 5:8-9).

It is only as God values human life that man can know and regard its sanctity. As man continued in his existence after The Fall (Genesis 3), he became exceedingly wicked and evil, rejecting God in every conscious thought and action (Genesis 6:1-13). Once again, it was by death that God sought to purge the world of its evil bringing a flood that would destroy the earth and its evil inhabitants. Only Noah, his family and the inhabitants of the ark were spared. Noah found grace in the sight of God and was saved – that is to say, he lived by faith, in the midst of an evil world, doing what God commanded in building the ark (Genesis 6:9, 22; Hebrews 11:7).

After God purged the world, with the flood bringing death and destruction on the world of the ungodly, He promised never to destroy the world by flood (Genesis 8:21-22). As confirmation of this promise he gave to Noah and unto all succeeding generations the rainbow as a sign of His covenant (9:12-15). It is in this context that God gives an eternal principle regarding the sanctity of human life saying to Noah, “And for your lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man. Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made man in his own image” (Genesis 9:5-6). The value of human life demands that when a man’s life is taken by another the only appropriate penalty for the life taken is the life of the person who took the life.

There is nothing on earth commensurate to the value and sanctity of human life. The death penalty is not a matter of an “eye for an eye;” it is far more significant than that! There is no punishment, outside of the death penalty for murderers, which evinces and reinforces the sanctity of human life. In that a murderer is put to death, for the life taken, the death penalty is expressing the divine regard for the sanctity of human life. Thus, as we show the appropriate divine regard for any thought or action we are acting morally. The death penalty is moral as it upholds the moral value and sanctity of human life given by God.