Full Rebuttal: Shannon Evans' John 8 - "How Jesus’ Position on the Death Penalty Informs Mine"
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RE: John 8 - "How Jesus’ Position on the Death Penalty Informs Mine", Everyday Ignatian, Shannon Evans, January 26, 2021
Subject: Full Rebuttal: John 8 - Jesus and the Death Penalty
From: Dudley Sharp, independent researcher, death penalty expert, former opponent, 832-439-2113, CV at bottom
Dear Mrs. Evans:
Thank you for your writings. As per the subject, I will rebut all points from your article, in order.
Method: I quote Evans (Evans) and reply or state as "Sharp".
NOTE I use Christian, non-Roman Catholic commentaries, only, because you may not be as familiar with them. They are, very, similar to the Roman Catholic ones, as you may note.
Preface
Likely, you are unfamiliar with most of this, as The Roman Catholic Church has become, very much, like a standard anti-death penalty group, using, only anti-death penalty material, then failing to fact check and vet it, while eschewing, altogether, pro-death penalty material (1).
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1) Evans: "Jesus' position on the death penalty":
Sharp: a) Jesus and the Death Penalty
b) The Death Penalty: Mercy, Expiation, Redemption & Salvation
2) Evans: The death penalty is part of "the culture of death in our nation".
Sharp:
a) see 1 a&b above and, everything, below:
b) Pro Life: The Death Penalty
c) Catechism & State Protection: The Gross Negligence of the Holy See
d) Forgiveness and Murder
e) What Did Jesus Teach about Violence and Turning the Other Cheek?
by: J. Daryl Charles, Timothy J. Demy, Crossway, May 16, 2014,
3) Evans: "We resolved to take one full day to pray for a nation that could one day imagine restorative, rather than retributive, justice."
Is there, anything, more restorative than salvation?
a) The Death Penalty: Mercy, Expiation, Redemption & Salvation
b) 30 Examples: How Death Penalty Opponents Value Murderers More Than Their Innocent Victims
AKA Full Rebuttal of Sir Richard Branson's Anti-death penalty "facts"
4) Evans: ". . . Jesus himself had intervened to stop the execution of a woman caught in adultery. When the public called for her to be stoned to death for her offense as prescribed by law . . . ".
Sharp: What Evans believes is this:
Evans: "Jesus’ response to capital punishment is a belief in the human spirit; a belief that forgiveness carries power; a belief that people can change; a belief that no one is beyond repair in an environment of restoration. Jesus had the eyes of a mystic, seeing that every soul longs for God and every soul deserves to have as long as possible to find the God they seek."
Sharp: That is not the response to capital punishment, but is the story of salvation, through Jesus Christ, but, even there, Evans makes an error. It appears that Evans has no clue as to the meaning of John 8 and the Jesuit's had no issue publishing her. How and why?
a) The text, itself, John 8, makes it clear that it is about Jesus' wisdom in avoiding the "entrapment" planned for Him, by his enemies. You can find that in countless commentaries, Christian (non-Catholic), Roman and Orthodox Catholic. Please read them. The text, itself, John 8, makes that very clear.
b) Evan, anti-death penalty activist Sister Helen Prejean, most often, inaccurate (2), got this right:
“It is abundantly clear that the Bible depicts murder as a capital crime for which death is considered the appropriate punishment, and one is hard pressed to find a biblical proof text in either the Hebrew Testament or the New Testament which unequivocally refutes this. Even Jesus’ admonition “Let him without sin cast the first stone”, when He was asked the appropriate punishment for an adulteress (John 8:7) – the Mosaic Law prescribed death – should be read in its proper context. This passage is an entrapment story, which sought to show Jesus’ wisdom in besting His adversaries. It is not an ethical pronouncement about capital punishment." Sister Helen Prejean, from her book Dead Man Walking.
Prejean is 100% correct.
When she became an anti-death penalty icon, she, unethically, reversed that, very much, defining her ethics, throughout her 30-year ministry (2).
c) Evan's call for more time, hits a wall:
Romano Amerio: Some opposing capital punishment ". . . go on to assert that a life should not be ended because that would remove the possibility of making expiation, is to ignore the great truth that capital punishment is itself expiatory."
"In a humanistic religion expiation would of course be primarily the converting of a man to other men. On that view, time is needed to effect a reformation, and the time available should not be shortened."
"In God’s religion, on the other hand, expiation is primarily a recognition of the divine majesty and lordship, which can be and should be recognized at every moment, in accordance with the principle of the concentration of one’s moral life.”
“Amerio on capital punishment “, Chapter XXVI, 187. The death penalty, from the book Iota Unum, May 25, 2007 , www.domid.blogspot.com/2007/05/amerio-on-capital-punishment.html
d) "The tremendous irony is that now, two thousand years later, people who claim to love Jesus teach that He was precisely the heretic His enemies wanted to paint Him as. If Jesus was in fact repudiating capital punishment in this story, then He was neither the Divine Son of God nor even a true prophet." Religious Objection 8: What about the woman caught in adultery?, "Why I Support Capital Punishment, Part 11, May 7, 2008, Published 05.09.09 at Townhall.com, http://andrewtallmanshowarticles.blogspot.com/2008/05/why-i-support-capital-punishment-part_07.html
e) John 8:1-11 "Christ neither found fault with the law (execution for adultery), nor excused the prisoner's guilt; nor did He countenance the pretended zeal of the Pharisees" (Matthew Henry's Concise Commentary)
f) John 8:7 "(Jesus) is contending not against punishment being inflicted by human law, but against men taking the law into their own hands." (Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges)
. . . . many more. Research.
5) Evans: "Jesus spoke the now well-known line, “Let him without sin cast the first stone.”
Sharp: a) Evans, wrongly, uses that as an, heretical, anti-death penalty pronouncement against capital punishment for adultery, as, previously, detailed.
b) John 8:7: "It is to be noted, in the application of this answer, that our Lord does not lay down sinlessness as the necessary condition of fitness for taking part in the punishment of guilt. This would be to nullify law, for there could be then no human executive power." (Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers).
c) John 8:"By this saying of our Saviour, we must not understand it the will of God, that those who are magistrates, and employed in executing the Lord’s vengeance on malefactors, should themselves be free from all guilt, for then no justice should be done. The vengeance is God’s, not theirs; it is the law of God which they execute." (Matthew Poole's Commentary)
I wish it was astounding that the religious do not, instantly, recognize that. They do not.
d) Jesus, of course, knew the sins of all of those Pharisees calling for the execution of the adulteress - sins which undoubtedly, included adultery, and He shamed them into withdrawal, with that well known quote. That is the meaning, not recognized by Evans.
John 8: " . . . adultery; which was in this age a prevailing sin, and even among their doctors; hence our Lord calls that generation an adulterous one, Matthew 12:39; and which was literally true of them; with this compare Romans 2:22. Adultery increased to such a degree in this age, that they were obliged to leave off the trial of suspected wives, because their husbands were generally guilty this way; and the waters would have no effect, if the husband was criminal also: so the Jews say (q), (Gill's Exposition of the Entire Bible)
6) Sharp: The entrapment was three-fold.
a) First to get Jesus to agree to the execution, as, at the time, the Roman's were the law, as all Christian's know this, with the Passion of the Christ, with Pontius Pilot ruling on His execution.
Had Jesus agreed to the execution of the adulteress, He would have been violating Roman law and would be arrested. It was not His time.
b) Secondly, if Jesus chose to free the adulteress' from execution, the Pharisees would find Jesus a heretic.
c) Thirdly, Evans touched on it, which was "And where was the man in the story — the one with whom the woman was supposedly caught in adultery? What of him?"
He was likely, part of the set up and was nowhere to be found and adultery cannot be punished without both parties.
7) Evans: "Where on death row are the ones with social capital? The less vulnerable? The wealthy ones who have friends in high places or can afford good lawyers?" "Sister Helen Prejean has worked with inmates on death row for 40 years and attests that she has never met anyone there with money or resources. “Capital punishment means those without the capital get the punishment,” she says."
Sharp: That's a common anti-death penalty talking point, accepted with no thought nor research or deceit.
"99.8% of poor murderers have avoided execution. It is, solely, dependent upon one's definitions of "wealthy" and "poor", as to whether "wealthy" murderers are any more or less likely than 0.2% to be executed, than are the "poor", based upon the vast minority of capital murders committed by the "wealthy", as compared to the vast majority committed by the "poor". By far, the greatest number of capital murder cases are robbery/murders, with nearly 0% of "wealthy" capital/death penalty eligible murders committed by the "wealthy", based upon any reasonable definition of wealthy. Obvious.
Is There Class Disparity with Executions?
8) Evans: "Indeed, Lisa Montgomery, Cory Johnson and Dustin Higgs were still executed the following week as scheduled. I shed tears for them; yet that sense of peace has not left. It seems the act of taking a simple public stand to conscientiously object to the status quo left its mark on me, sealing off my soul from total despair and relinquishing it to God alone. Perhaps all Christians should be activists; perhaps this is what James meant when he said that pure and undefiled religion is to “keep oneself unstained from the world” (James 1:27). Perhaps what changes us will also one day change the world."
Sharp: One can, only, hope, that such willful ignorance does not do that . . . but, it might, as it has become a standard, within the Roman Catholic Church (1), as so many others, with no evidence of change (1).
The Innocent Victims
Not once, did Evans mention the innocents, raped, tortured and murdered in capital, death penalty eligible crimes, nor did she state she shed tears for them, aka, standard anti-death penalty omissions, as reviewed, here:
30 Examples: How Death Penalty Opponents Value Murderers
More Than Their Innocent Victims
In Closing
The Roman Catholic Church has become, very much, like a standard anti-death penalty group, using, only anti-death penalty material, then failing to fact check and vet it, while eschewing, altogether, the pro-death penalty material (1), which made up the first 2000 years of Christianity (3).
By fact and reason, the three pillars, for the "inadmissibility" of the death penalty, 2018 CCC 2267, are no such thing (4).
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FN
1) These rebut all of the US Bishops claims of the death penalty.
Research with sources, fact checking, vetting & critical thinking, as required of anyone within a public policy debate and which rebut all anti-death penalty claims.
Most will realize that the media has been using only anti-death penalty claims and then, failed to fact check, vet, nor use critical thinking, with that research, while avoiding all pro-death penalty research and experts, for decades. How do I know most will realize this? Because they wouldn't have seen any of this, prior:
The Death Penalty: Justice & Saving More Innocents
and
Students, Academics & Journalists: Death Penalty Research
(7 pro-death penalty experts listed)
2) Does Truth Matter? Sr. Prejean, The Church & U of Notre Dame
and
"Rebel Nun" - Dishonest/Dishonorable Sister Prejean Documentary?
3) Religion and The Death Penalty
4) The Catholic Church & The Death Penalty
12 (14) Factual Errors: 2018 CCC 2267 amendment
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600+ pro death penalty quotes from murder victim's families &
3300+ from some of the greatest thinkers in history
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Victim Services
Victims' Voices
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