How should we treat criminals? Let’s plunge into the Deeper Waters and find out.
In this chapter, Longman looks at criminal justice. I think we can all easily agree that capital punishment is taught in the Old Testament and even performed by God Himself at times. However, it also has the famous rule of lex talionis. The idea is that the punishment must fit the crime. There cannot be more and there cannot be less.
Naturally, things change in the New Testament to an extent. This is no longer a nation one is talking about, but rather a community that has no legal power to enforce something like a death penalty. Longman brings up the man sleeping with his father’s wife in 1 Corinthians. In the Old Testament, there would be no question. Death awaits both of them. In the New Testament, it’s being cut off from the community.
Longman does bring up some concerns he has personally with the death penalty. One is that life in prison wasn’t as much an option there as it is now. Perhaps that is so, but again, what is the point? For one, they did still have prisons and someone could have easily been imprisoned for a crime. Second, the death penalty is done because human life is sacred and to wrongfully and intentionally take that life is a crime against God and an attack on His nature.
The second is a bit more problematic in that Longman appeals to fairness, claiming that poor, and likely black, defendants don’t usually have as good attorneys as do rich, and likely white, defendants do. If anything, I would say it is the opposite today. As soon as race is brought into it, the whole dynamic changes such that if anyone did sentence an “oppressed group” they are seen as the villains immediately. He also claims that there are studies that back this, but unfortunately, he does not cite them.
Also, we are told that sometimes the evidence has been retried and a person who got the death penalty turned out to be innocent. First, this is why I only recommend using the death penalty in cases of absolute certainty. Second, while it is true that we cannot bring back someone who wrongfully got the death penalty, neither can we bring back years of their life that they lose if we wrongfully sentence them to prison, but does that mean we should avoid prison sentences?
I also noticed that Longman did not cite Lewis’s final article that he wrote about the prison system that you can find here. While Longman encourages restorative justice, in this article, Lewis argued to return to retributive justice and this on behalf of the criminal. I cannot do his article justice in this post.
So in the end, I do not think Longman has made a case and when he has spoken out of his area, there is a definite lack. Those who are wanting something really controversial should know the remaining chapters all deal with that. We will start next time with immigration.
In Christ,
Nick Peters
(And I affirm the virgin birth)