CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: RETRIBUTION OR CORRECTIVE?

CAPITAL PUNISHMENT: RETRIBUTION OR CORRECTIVE?

 

One of the amazing paradoxes of our day is the increase of crime and its viciousness on the one hand, and the growing softness of society toward the administration of punishment to the criminal on the other. There has come before the Supreme Court of the United States the issue of the constitutionality of capital punishment. By far the greater number of the states have ruled out the death penalty, and in other states where this law is still on the statute books the highest executives want the infliction of this penalty to be inflicted by a U.S. Supreme Court decision.

In a recent action of the California Supreme Court, the ruling was handed down that the state's death penalty is unconstitutional, which means that 107 men and women on Death Row in that state will never see the inside of San Quentin Prison's apple-green gas chamber. In issuing its decision, the California Supreme Court made it clear that regardless of what the Supreme Court of the United States does, "death may not be exacted as punishment for crime in this state." The court further explained the basis for its ruling. The California State Constitution uses the words "cruel or unusual punishment" while the United States Constitution says "cruel and unusual punishment." So the judges in this six-to-one decision insisted that execution is both cruel and unusual punishment in today's world. "It degrades and dehumanizes all who participate in its process," and "it is unnecessary to any legitimate goal of the state and is incompatible with the dignity of man and the judicial processes." Therefore the court ordered that all death penalties be changed to life imprisonment at once.

It is not surprising that at that time Governor Reagan joined the long list of thinking men who view with alarm the trend that is growing across this land. He assailed the court's decision and announced that the state would petition for a rehearing of the case. He declared that if the decision "goes unchallenged, the judicial philosophy inherent in this ruling could be an almost lethal blow to society's right to protect law-abiding citizens and their families against violence and crime."

The Judicial Philosophy

Recognizing that there are degrees of heinousness in crime, what sort of judicial philosophy is it that assesses the most vicious crime as unworthy of the death penalty? Pious language and humanitarian phraseology provide a very convenient smoke screen behind which to veil the real truth. And this will sound plausible to most people, especially people who are conditioned over the pattern of thinking in this present day. But behind this the real truth is taking its desperate toll.

In today's world, society is groping blindly for the essential causes for crime. Not too many years ago a commission was established by the President of the United States to study this matter. It was pitiful, the kind of answers they came up with, and for which they were paid thousands of dollars. When the task was finished they were not any nearer to the real answers. At least three theories are extant: (1) that certain men on the physiological side are born criminals This is a sort of fatalistic explanation, and if it were true, then such a person is not blameworthy; (2) that on the psychological side, a man may not be well adjusted to society, and so he turns out to be a criminal: and in this case what he needs is not a prison, but a physician, a psychiatrist; (3) on the sociological side, a man may be the victim of the circumstances in which he lives, such as poverty, slums, ostracism.

There is some truth in all these suggestions. But in each case there is an almost ingenious detour of the real issue. Actually, each one of these suggestions deals with effects growing out of the real cause, and the proposed treatment in each case is for the effect. If the case is diagnosed as physiological, then isolate the person so he cannot molest others; if the case is diagnosed as psychological, then assign him to a sanitarium; if the case is diagnosed as sociological, then change the environment. In no one of these proposed treatments in the judicial philosophy of our day does the prescription get at the real cause of crime.

The Biblical Philosophy

It is true in our day that little credence is given to the Bible as the possible source of information that might solve some problems. But this writer believes that the Bible is the eternal Word of God and at every point is inviolable truth. At the very outset of the Bible a command was issued to our first parents, and for disobedience to this command a penalty was attached (Gen. 2:16-17). That penalty was death. There was no possibility of explaining their disobedience as physiological in origin, nor psychological in origin, nor sociological in origin. And death was not prescribed as a sort of rehabilitation process. Death was final and irrevocable.

This must mean that the punishment meted out by God was retributive and in no sense corrective. In death there can be no correction. But in death there can be the execution of a penalty that is retributive and commensurate with the enormity of the crime. God legislated this way against sin, because sin is a crime against God that imparts infinite heinousness to it. Nothing short of death, physical and spiritual, can approximate its blameworthiness. On the human level, when God established human government, He authorized men to exact the penalty of life for the taking of life (Gen. 9:6). And this was ordered of God because of the dignity of man; a dignity and worth which he acquired by being made in the image of God.

Herein lies the essential and basic reason for the execution of the death penalty. It is retributive and not corrective. The penalty should take this form for certain crimes in society, for there is no other in society that can reach this dimension and thus express the full desert incurred by the criminal. Any lighter sentence is to regard the crime lightly and encourage society to indulge themselves in it.

God demonstrated His retributive wrath upon sin by inflicting death upon His only Son at the cross. His Son, Jesus Christ, needed no correction, so the only sort of punishment He could possibly experience was retributive in nature. Since He was innocent, in this respect He suffered the retributive wrath that sinners deserved, and by so doing opened up a way for men to appropriate that ministry by faith and thus escape their just deserts before the law of God. "Christ died for our sins" (1 Cor. 15:3), "the just for the unjust" (1 Peter 3:18).

The present trend in judicial philosophy is moving more and more in the direction of the remedial view of punishment. This means that crime is being viewed as sickness and not as sin. Therefore the punishments being prescribed are intended to be corrective in character and not retributive. Rights and wrongs for action are disappearing, and in their place a view is developing that prescribes a treatment for correction which returns the criminal to society without changing him. The only thing that can be expected is a relapse into former conduct and the further degradation of society. The entering wedge is the removal of the death penalty for capital crimes. But this will not be the end. In due time this philosophy will cover all crime.

Let it be understood right here, that God does not underestimate the ill-desert of sin. It is worthy of death. And this death was paid by His Son. He did not spare His Son. And this came first to deal with the problem of sin. But in this great display of retributive wrath at the cross, the foundation was laid to deal with the correction of sin in the life of the sinner. That sinner who will accept the work of Christ on the cross to cover God's wrath against sin will also receive a new life from God, and the life of the Holy Spirit who will give him the power to live a life of holiness (Gal. 2:20). Many professing cannot achieve the blameless state and attempt to say that happens at His return instead of obedience to the Spirit’s leading making the Bible’s teaching on this issue a myth to those in power over this issue (2 Pet. 3:14; Phil 2:15).