Church Teaching on Death Penalty

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I reject the premise. So it isn’t. When I cite the example of Jesus teaching on divorce, Jesus is his own authenticity.
 
SPJPII called slavery intrinsically evil and seperately a sin of man against God
 
Maximus1 said:
Was natural law the same for all time with divorce.
Jesus never said it was wrong during the time men’s hearts were hard. He never condemned the law of Moses in the past. He said it is wrong now.
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[…] I answer that, on this point there are two opinions. For some say that under the Law those who put away their wives, after giving them a bill of divorce, were not excused from sin, although they were excused from the punishment which they should have suffered according to the Law: and that for this reason Moses is stated to have permitted the bill of divorce. Accordingly they reckon four kinds of permission: one by absence of precept, so that when a greater good is not prescribed, a lesser good is said to be permitted: thus the Apostle by not prescribing virginity, permitted marriage (1 Cor.7). The second is by absence of prohibition: thus venial sins are said to be permitted because they are not forbidden. The third is by absence of prevention, and thus all sins are said to be permitted by God, in so far as He does not prevent them whereas He can. The fourth is by omission of punishment, and in this way the bill of divorce was permitted in the Law, not indeed for the sake of obtaining a greater good, as was the dispensation to have several wives, but for the sake of preventing a greater evil, namely wife-murder to which the Jews were prone on account of the corruption of their irascible appetite. Even so they were allowed to lend money for usury to strangers, on account of corruption in their concupiscible appetite, lest they should exact usury of their brethren; and again on account of the corruption of suspicion in the reason they were allowed the sacrifice of jealousy, lest mere suspicion should corrupt their judgment. But because the Old Law, though it did not confer grace, was given that it might indicate sin, as the saints are agreed in saying, others are of opinion that if it had been a sin for a man to put away his wife, this ought to have been indicated to him, at least by the law or the prophets: “Show My people their wicked doings” (Is.58:1): else they would seem to have been neglected, if those things which are necessary for salvation and which they knew not were never made known to them: and this cannot be admitted, because the righteousness of the Law observed at the time of the Law would merit eternal life. For this reason they say that although to put away one’s wife is wrong in itself, it nevertheless became lawful by God’s permitting it, and they confirm this by the authority of Chrysostom, who says [Hom. xxxii in the Opus Imperfectum falsely ascribed to St. John Chrysostom] that “the Lawgiver by permitting divorce removed the guilt from the sin.” Although this opinion has some probability the former is more generally held: wherefore we must reply to the arguments on both sides. […]
(Saint Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologica, Supplement, Question 67, Article 3, Whether it was lawful to divorce a wife under the Mosaic law )
 
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So you believe it’s in God’s nature to order one human being to slaughter the children of another race?
You believe with the fundamentalists that this bible passage must be read as literalist history in regards to God’s commands?
 
Maximus1 said:
SPJPII called slavery intrinsically evil and seperately a sin of man against God
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The topic here is capital punishment, not slavery.

The form of this argument, however, should be addressed. Essentially it is this: something changed in the past so everything can change in the future. Phrased like that it does seem a bit silly, but it does capture the essence of this position.
 
“So you believe it’s in God’s nature to order one human being to slaughter the children of another race?”

Inasmuch as we understand Gods nature, we understand that He does not suffer, correct?

…And if compassion and sympathy are a form of suffering, or are emotional in their essence, we must admit that God, at minimum, does not share these traits in the way that we do.

This is not to say that Jesus Christ, in his humanity, did not have sympathy.
 
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That is a mouthful. Honestly , when you add Culpability, punishment or not, you change the dynamic of conscience.
 
Reference please, that the Church holds to literalist fundamentalist views iin this passage, that God literally/factually commanded one set of human beings to slaughter another set of human beings.

Reference to official Church positions please.
 
Maximus1 said:
Pope Francis says FUNDEMENTALISM is violence in Christ’s name
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Not just Francis, Francis in continuity.
POST-SYNODAL
APOSTOLIC EXHORTATION VERBUM DOMINI OF THE HOLY FATHER
BENEDICT XVI
TO THE BISHOPS, CLERGY,
CONSECRATED PERSONS
AND THE LAY FAITHFUL
ON THE WORD OF GOD
IN THE LIFE AND MISSION
OF THE CHURCH
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The fundamentalist interpretation of sacred Scripture
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  1. The attention we have been paying to different aspects of the theme of biblical hermeneutics now enables us to consider a subject which came up a number of times during the Synod: that of the fundamentalist interpretation of sacred Scripture.[145] The Pontifical Biblical Commission, in its document The Interpretation of the Bible in the Church, has laid down some important guidelines. Here I would like especially to deal with approaches which fail to respect the authenticity of the sacred text, but promote subjective and arbitrary interpretations . The “literalism” championed by the fundamentalist approach actually represents a betrayal of both the literal and the spiritual sense, and opens the way to various forms of manipulation, as, for example, by disseminating anti-ecclesial interpretations of the Scriptures. “The basic problem with fundamentalist interpretation is that, refusing to take into account the historical character of biblical revelation, it makes itself incapable of accepting the full truth of the incarnation itself. As regards relationships with God, fundamentalism seeks to escape any closeness of the divine and the human … for this reason, it tends to treat the biblical text as if it had been dictated word for word by the Spirit. It fails to recognize that the word of God has been formulated in language and expression conditioned by various periods”.[146] Christianity, on the other hand, perceives in the words the Word himself, the Logos who displays his mystery through this complexity and the reality of human history.[147] The true response to a fundamentalist approach is “the faith-filled interpretation of sacred Scripture”. This manner of interpretation, “practised from antiquity within the Church’s Tradition, seeks saving truth for the life of the individual Christian and for the Church. It recognizes the historical value of the biblical tradition. Precisely because of the tradition’s value as an historical witness, this reading seeks to discover the living meaning of the sacred Scriptures for the lives of believers today”,[148] while not ignoring the human mediation of the inspired text and its literary genres.
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As far as I know, some scholars have recently demonstrated that the biblical author was using Ancient Near East warfare rhetoric, wich often engaged in hyperbolical exaggerations when accounting for important military victories (that is, saying that the defeated people was totally exterminated even thought it didn’t actually happen - not for the purpose of deceiving, just for rhetorical custom ).
 
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I suppose the violent flood of Genesis was either 1) not directed by God given God could not cause such violence - and we have been wholly ignorant of this truth or 2) it was only symbolic?

It is increasingly clear that Catholics are bifurcating significantly in their understanding of God. This is abhorrent and is an emergency.
 
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Mrboast said:
  1. not directed by God given God could not cause such violence - and we have been wholly ignorant of this truth
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This would be problematic, since you would accuse the biblical author of attributing to God an action that He didn’t commit (wich would be a blasphemy, even more so because you think such an action would be immoral ), and it would involve a denial of the inspirarion of Scripture, since God can’t inspire falsehoods and blasphemies.
 
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You are free to do so. Anyway, even if the new theories were true, that wouldn’t put into question the historical nature of the book nor Church doctrine on death penalty.
 
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I have no doubts about it, in some cases He clearly did (for example with the Tenth Plague of Egypt ).
 
You used the word infallible in there, and it does not remotely belong in relation to this discussion of Scripture interpretation. The Church is full of interpretations of various kinds of difficult passages. I will go with Pope Benedict and many others who do not believe that God, as revealed in Christ, is capable of commanding slaughter of innocents.

Do you have a comment on Pope Benedict’s thoughts above?
 
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