Segment 1: The Biblical Foundation
Explore Genesis 9:6 as the foundational passage for understanding the sanctity of human life.
Discuss the Noachic Covenant and its significance in upholding the value of all life, as seen in the prohibition of consuming blood.
Examine the tension between the sanctity of human life and the requirement to put to death any animal that kills a human, based on Leviticus 20:15.
Segment 2: Capital Punishment and Romans 13
Dive into Romans 13:1-7 and its relevance to the issue of capital punishment.
“Does loving your enemy mean not punishing him? No, for loving myself does not mean that I ought not to subject myself to punishment—even to death. If one had committed a murder, the right Christian thing to do would be to give yourself up to the police and be hanged. It is, therefore, in my opinion, perfectly right for a Christian judge to sentence a man to death or a Christian soldier to kill an enemy. I always have thought so, ever since I became a Christian, and long before the war, and I still think so now that we are at peace.
It is no good quoting “Thou shalt not kill.” There are two Greek words: the ordinary word to kill and the word to murder. And when Christ quotes that commandment He uses the murder one in all three accounts, Matthew, Mark, and Luke. And I am told there is the same distinction in Hebrew. All killing is not murder any more than all sexual intercourse is adultery. When soldiers came to St. John the Baptist asking what to do, he never remotely suggested that they ought to leave the army: nor did Christ when He met a Roman sergeant-major—what they called a centurion. [. . .] We may kill if necessary, but we must not hate and enjoy it.” -C.S. Lewis Mere Christianity
Samuel Willard (1640–1707):
"It is not only a mercy to the public, but a mercy to the offenders, that God hath appointed a measure of punishment, and restrained them from arbitrary, unlimited cruelty."