The other day I heard a sermon on the radio titled “What does the Bible say about Capital Punishment?”. For the sake of present purposes the preacher need not be named. I simply want to address a point he made, one which seemed to define his whole argument (because really, it was more of a constructed argument than a sermon, though I suppose one could argue whether there’s ever a difference).
The preacher, in exploring what the scriptures say concerning capital punishment, quoted another well-known Christian leader who stated that the “fundamental truth of biblical anthropology” is the maxim - “the soul that sins must die”. The conclusion of his message was that the Bible is indeed supportive of capital punishment, and so, by extension, should we be.
I was chatting about this with a friend of mine and he reminded me that Rob Bell talks about our starting points, saying something to the affect that we can choose to begin either at Genesis 1 or Genesis 3; either at creation when we were made in God’s image, or at the fall when we muddied that image.
I would add to this that in beginning at Genesis 1 we now also begin at the Resurrection, where we get the magical first sighting of new creation, and along with it the really REALLY good news that actually, no matter how messed up we are, we can be made new; that image can be cleaned up for us.
I would argue that this is in fact the fundamental truth of biblical anthropology and the place where we should set out from when exploring what the scriptures have to teach us about how to treat each other. I think it would help us a lot in our efforts to love our neighbours, be they convicted criminals or not.
