Product Description
This digital document is an article from First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life, published by Institute on Religion and Public Life on April 1, 1998. The length of the article is 609 words. The page length shown above is based on a typical 300-word page. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Digital Locker immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

From the supplier: The National Conference of Catholic Bishops is opposed to the death penalty, but their position does not carry the official weight of binding church doctrine. The "Evangelium Vitae" supports the death penalty under limited circumstances when there is no other way to protect society. Catholics can in good conscience support the death penalty in limited circumstances. Catholics may also support the prohibition of the death penalty, but are not mandated to do so.

Citation Details
Title: A position not, or not yet, mandated. (Catholic Church's view on capital punishment)
Author: Richard Neuhaus
Publication: First Things: A Monthly Journal of Religion and Public Life (Refereed)
Date: April 1, 1998
Publisher: Institute on Religion and Public Life
Issue: n82Page: p62(2)

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Customer Reviews (1)

Enjoyed seeing this issue discussed from Biblical standpoint
This book presented opposing viewponts on capital punishment from two prominent Biblical theologians. While I did not agree with either theologian on all points, this somewhat overly scholarly debate did help me reexamine my own beliefs and determine why I believe what I believe.

Dr. House argued that capital punishment is not only condoned but also commanded by God in the Old Testament, and he used New Testament passages to affirm those commands were universal and unchanging.His arguments relied heavily on his interpretion of Genesis 9 (the Noachian Covenant) as a universal mandate establishing God's relationship to man, and man's relationship to each other.Unfortunately, I felt he took the "easy" way out by claiming that the entire Mosaic Law had been invalidated by Christ and therefore was not relevant to his case.I think a more fair analysis would have been to divide the Mosaic Laws into moral, religous, and legal subcomponents and deal with eachseparately.

Dr. Yoder used a standard "Christ-transforming-culture" argument to assert that God's acceptance of capital punishment has changed from Biblical times to today.The themes of Christ's teachings have helped evolve modern culture past the need for retribution-based systems of punishment (i.e., some Scriptures have to be interpreted in terms of the cultural bias of its authors). Yoder explains away the Noachian Covenant as a reflection of an obsolete era and basis his arguments primarily on John 8, where Jesus pardons an alduteress about to be stoned to death.

I really enjoyed seeing this contemporary issue discussed from Scriptural postions.Both men made interesting arguments, but I felt Dr. Yoder did not respect or believe in the infallibility of Scripture and tried to use secular sources (modern psychology and social science) to bend his interpretations. ... Read more