Responsibility, Vengeance, and the Death Penalty

In the fallen world, the center is at the same time the boundary. Man stands between law and fulfillment. He has the law, but he cannot fulfill it. Now Christ stands where man fails towards the law. Christ as the center means that he is the fulfillment of the law. So he is in turn the boundary and the judgment of man, but at the same time the beginning of his new existence, its center. Christ as the center of human existence means that he is man's judgment and his justification.
Dietrich Bonhoeffer
Christ the Center


This quote by Bonhoeffer opened up Victor Anderson's essay entitled, "Responsibility, Vengeance and the Death Penalty" and sufficiently summarized much of Anderson's position on the death penalty. This becomes apparent towards the end of the essay. Anderson divides his position into the Divine command (a theology based on Karl Barth), Vengeance as a dark symbol (a theology based on Edward Farley), and the Responsibilist Approach (a theology based on H. Richard Niebuhr. With all of these theologies, he critically analyzes their positions and concludes what he sees as viable in answering  the question of the death penalty. Divine command ethics asserts that theology and ethics are intertwined as any ethics with philosophy as its basis brings about general human ethics which is "philosophically universalizable" (197). Barth does not want to ask "What is the good?" but rather "Who am I?" as this question will dictate what one should do or what the good is. Divine command ethics essentially has God alone at the center of moral life. However, the part of divine command ethics that interests Anderson is the idea of the divine yes versus the divine no. The divine yes is that God commands us to live and to be. The opposite of this is death and vengeance as the divine no. Anderson and Barth both believe that God has used the divine yes more than the divine no. Anderson writes, "For Christian ethics, this priority of the divine yes over no suggests that God acts for humanity as the gracious God who commands the creature to live and be" (198). This theology of the divine no demands that we act in mercy in grace as God has. However, much to Anderson's dismay, Barth finds room for the death penalty in this theology: in the case of treason or tyranny. Anderson wonders why grace, mercy, and God's judgement in Jesus Christ is not extended to the tyrant and traitor. Anderson moves on to discuss Vengeance as a Dark Symbol. He reiterates Farley's ideas that vengeance is co-present with the idea of justice. Justice regulates vengeance so it does not overtake the entire social order. Vengeance works as a dark symbol in our lives in that they, "sustain, enchant, and empower forms of community that often rival the best intentions of Christian community" (204). The divine yes brings forth the triumph of grace over vengeance, a dark symbol that can poison our mission to build Christian community on this earth. Niebuhr proposed the responsibilist approach to the death penalty. This theology is not about command or obedience, but rather responsibility. Humans are in constant dialogue with each other, answering action committed onto them. This is where the Bonhoeffer quote is brought into the discussion by Anderson, "I take this to mean that Christ has already stood in both the judgment of every person and in justification of all. As I understand the gospel, this judgement is unrepeatable, for it was once and for all a judgement of death" (209). Therefore, we should respond to any action done upon us with mercy instead of judgement. The theme of our dialogue with the world should be mercy and grace.
I appreciated the divine command ethics in its reframing the question from "what is the good?" to "who am I?". It addresses the same question that many previous authors have touched on in this book in discussing the theoretical foundations of arguments we make or "moral anthropology". I think we can easily get lost in superficial arguments in regards to fallibility of convictions or defense of society without really understanding the moral presuppositions that we are putting forth. By asking "who am I?" instead of "what is the good?" we don't waste time arguing about what the good is which will never be similar to someone who didn't believe in the same answer as you as to "who am I?".  Moving on to the divine yes and divine no, while it sounds great it seems less defendable and substantiated by actual evidence. Even if you could count how many times God used the divine yes and the divine no, it is easy for someone to point out that some divine yes's or divine no's may be worth more than others. This argument seems to subjective to hold up in an argument for a long time. It is nice to say that God uses the divine yes more than the divine no, but I don't think the argument will hold if you dig much deeper than that. I would not use this argument when seriously discussing why I  am against the death penalty as I think other reasons are far more defensible.