The Evangelical Universalist Forum

Cruel And Unusual Punishment

Theology Biblical Theology
#1

I’ve often wondered why God’s punishments in the Bible often seem cruel and barbaric. They don’t seem to fit the crime. People are commanded to be stoned to death for things like picking up sticks on the Sabbath when Israel was a Theocracy. Some (like Jonathan Edwards) have said that the correct punishment for a crime is proportional to the status of the wronged individual and that the Bible teaches that all sins are against God (which they are). But this principle isn’t entirely correct. It’s not just to punish a person more severely because of the status of the one he has sinned against.

Part of what determines the severity of the punishment isn’t the status of the person one offends but the type of being one offends (after all, a crime against a human merits worse punishment than the same crime against a dog and a crime against a dog merits worse punishment than the same crime against an ant). All sins are against God (analogy: all crimes in Pennsylvania are also crimes against the state of Pennsylvania), who is a different type of being altogether. This is why God’s punishments can seem so severe. Yet we know that they are just and not abusive because they fit the crime.

#2

I personally wonder if the notion: ‘life is cheap’, comes into it. I don’t actually think that life is cheap, literally… however, God seems to be somewhat ambivalent about mankinds scourge in the wake of such a debilitating condition (sin). God appears to treat some sins with ambivalence and others with symbolic aggression.

The stories of the bible assist us (humanity) with tools of accountability and function. These same stories have become part of the ethos of every nation experience and every personal experience. They are, as Jung would say, archetypical. The language God uses of a *lake of fire *is also severe, but taken as an archetype to steer mankind toward a corporate conscience appears to be very effective.

If God intends to restore all, and the object of death has a cathartic benefit, then God does not jeopardize His righteousness or His justice by any perceived punitive excesses. The cross, after all, appears very excessive - but what if its not? What if the pains Christ experienced temporarily account for nothing in the bigger picture. If this was a corporal punishment that Christ endured, and He was hung on the tree as a petty criminal, numbered with thieves, then what does it say for those who willingly endure punishment without any crime:

Paul gives a reason for this ambivalence here:

And again:

Severity, I think, can only be weighed up with the full picture of restitution in mind. Going to the dentist can appear barbaric when it is viewed out of context. Within context, it is a very small pain that brings about much relief. Severity, then, is somewhat of an illusion. It is psychosomatic. These are just my thoughts anyway.

S.

#3

Someone else posted this – maybe Allan? He probably said it better, but this is my attempt:

A little girl is wandering in the countryside and, beginning to feel hungry, she breaks off a head of wheat and eats it. Ordinarily such a crime might be overlooked – theft of so small a thing by so small a person – but it IS illegal to steal a farmer’s crops, and this particular wheat field belongs to the king of the entire region – a very great person indeed.

The little girl is seen and reported. She is apprehended and sentenced to death following the routine medieval tortures. The crime is a very great crime because it was committed against a very important person – his majesty the king. Therefore only an infinite penalty is appropriate. Unfortunately the king of the little girl’s country doesn’t know how to inflict an infinite penalty, so he has to settle for torture and death. After all, justice must be satisfied. If the king does not punish those who commit crime against him, he would be unjust, and it is against his nature to be unjust.

#4

What absolute twaddle. So “it’s not just to punish a person more severely because of the status of the one he has sinned against”, even if, as Jonathan Edwards thinks, all sins are against God. But because all sins are against God, it is just for God to administer cruel and barbaric punishments for trivial ‘sins’ like picking up sticks on the Sabbath.

Mmmm.

#5

Most of the early Australians were brought here as convicts for stealing grain or pulling on a tree branch. There are many crimes that still need to be applied with the spirit of grace. Thank goodness we were born in the era of grace. We westerners are particularly fortunate that law has progressed for us, even if it is still archaic in places.

#6

Here’s a Biblical example from the book of Acts:

#7

What is cruel and unusual about the death of Ananias? Other than it was used as an example, nothing happened to him that is not common to all humanity.

Everyone dies. Death is the result of original sin. There is nothing unusual about death. Some die in more difficult circumstances than others.

#8

He was punished to death for lying by holding back part of the proceeds. This is a severe punishment for the crime of lying.

#9

Who or what killed Ananias?

S.

#10

And your evidence for this claim is?

#11

Hi Steve

I agree wholeheartedly with your initial statement here. But to extrapolate from that to your conclusion that severity is “somewhat of an illusion” is a step too far for me. Yes, going to the dentist is a small pain that brings relief from worse pain. But a horrible, barbaric death by stoning - whatever the seriousness of the ‘offence’ that incurred such punishment - is not illusory. It is especially not illusory to the poor soul who suffers such a death, but neither is it illusory to his loved ones and friends, or to those who merely read or hear about the death (which includes us).

Personally I refuse to ascribe any cruel or barbaric ‘punishment’ to God, and I believe that Scripture* is in error when it does this (or appears to do this). I hold this view because if God does indeed inflict cruel, barbaric punishments on his beloved children, then he is acting in direct contradiction of John’s clear statement that “God is light; in him is no darkness at all”, and in direct contradiction of his nature and essence “as love” - and hence is not God in any meaningful sense. I know you have a much higher view of Scripture than me, so I would be interested to hear your views on this.

I also find the ‘argument’ that because God is infinte, all sin against him is of infinite disvalue, hence deserving of infinite punishment, to be utterly specious. There is no Biblical basis for it whatsoever. To my mind it is no more than theological sleight-of-hand, cooked up by those of a Calvinist bent in a desperate attempt to explain away a horrible, and horribly illogical doctrine.

Cheers

Johnny

  • By this I mean the Old Testament. I haven’t come across any New Testament examples of cruel or barbaric punishment by God. If there are any I’ve missed, it would be good to examine them together.
#12

Justice dictates that part of what determines the severity of the punishment for a crime is the type of being one offends. A crime against a human merits worse punishment than the same crime against a dog and a crime against a dog merits worse punishment than the same crime against an ant. All sins are against God who is a different type of being altogether. This is why God’s punishments can seem so severe. Yet we know that they are just and not abusive because they fit the crime. There’s nothing illogical about it at all.

#13

Hi Johnny,

I don’t mean that the experience is literally illusionary, but that the significance, within the bigger picture, is somewhat exaggerated by our own sensitivity to pain and grief. When we die all things will become apparent to us, even if they are hard to reconcile within our own human context now.

S.

#14

Yes, fair point Steve. Sorry if I was being overly literal in my view of your view, if you get my drift :slight_smile: . I’m totally on board with the idea that all pain and suffering will ultimately turn out to be transitory, even illusory, and that we will praise God that it was so. But that, for me, does not mean that God either willed or desired the suffering - only that it was a necessary, an intrinsic component of ultimate glory.

Cheers

Johnny

#15

Sorry, Cole, but everything about your argument is muddled. For starters, ‘crime’ and ‘sin’ are not interchangeable synonyms - despite the way you switch between them. Crime is a cultural construct. Sin is a transgression of the moral law - God’s law.

You assert that God’s punishments are “just and not abusive because they fit the crime”, but this is a baseless, indeed meaningless assertion. If all crime (or sin) is of infinite disvalue, because it is against an infinite God, then under your ‘logic’ it would be just to punish every crime (or sin) with an infinitely severe punishment. You cannot have it both ways. Either there are degrees of sin (or crime) and concomitant degrees of punishment, in which case the ‘Infinite sin against an infinite God’ argument falls flat on its face, or all sins (or crimes) are indeed of infinite disvalue, because they are against an infinite God, in which case there can be no ‘degree of severity’ in either crime or punishment.

#16

Johnny,

Crime and sin can be used interchangeably.

I never said sin is infinite disvalue. I said they carry more weight because they are against God. God back and re-read my argument as to why. Clearly some sins are worse than others.

#17

All sins against an infinite being will be infinitely offensive, and deserve infinite punishment.

Equally, all finite sins against an infinite being will be infinitesimal, and will attract no punishment whatsoever.

Take your pick.

#18

Hi Cole

Yes, my apologies, you never said that sin against God is of infinite disvalue. I read something into your post that wasn’t there, sorry.

I suppose the bottom line is that I get very upset when it is suggested that it is somehow just for God to punish people in a way that would be considered barbaric in human society. You see, I can’t believe in or worship a god like that. Sorry, but I just can’t.

Love

Johnny

#19

There is some debate as to whether the punishment for gathering sticks on the Sabbath was ever actually carried out. Many scholars think it is simply there in the law code to underline the sacredness of the Sabbath through hyperbole (there was much debate about this law in Rabbinical commentary).

To say that the OT Torah code is God’s law is not completely accurate in my view. You have to look at all twenty eight laws in the Torah which carry the death penalty to see that these laws are in many ways human ones. These laws were of a certain time and a certain place and of a people who were being educated by God for a more universal role. The Torah code shows big improvements on other law codes of the time - mainly because it enshrines equality before the law. The same penalty holds for all people no matter what class they belong to or whether they be priest or king or pauper. And this idea of the equality of all before the law is predicated on the idea of the transcendence of God. I wish Christians would study these laws in greater detail and understand how these laws were the basis for more positive developments in later legal codes - Jewish, Christian, and secular.

One proper development of law has been in the direction of extending this equality fully towards women and children - this inclusive equality is not fully developed in OT law by any means. It just is not. (And I’m talking equal protection rather than equal culpability here)

#20

I don’t think of God as saying: “Don’t do what I do, just do what I say” He leads by example.