Newman, Paul, and the Death Penalty

Context: This piece (sans addendum) originated in response to a post by Ed Feser called "Newman on Capital Punishment." I would encourage you to read the whole thing; Dr. Feser's arguments are always well-structured and articulate even when they're completely wrong. I should say that I get rather caustic in my response, which I'm not particularly proud of, but I've retained the worst of it in the interesrs of honesty. I was responding to the particular statement quoted below, in which Feser is summarizing Cardinal Newman's arguments in favor of the death penalty. 

For note that Newman refers, specifically, to 'St. Paul's transferring the power of the sword to Christian magistrates.' This too is part of the traditional understanding, and yet another thing that modern day abolitionists sometimes resist.

My Response: Maybe because it's an utterly anachronistic reading that's incompatible with the facts of Church history. There were no "Christian magistrates" in Paul's time, nor would there be for quite a while. In fact, given the nature of Roman law (which was unjust and anti-Christ from top to bottom), a "Christian magistrate" would have been a blatant contradiction in terms—no different from "Christian mafioso" or "Christian pedophile" in its self-evident absurdity. Moreover, this only became the "traditional understanding" of the death penalty after Christians gained political power. Tertullian and Athenagoras (at least if the logic of his statement in Legatio Pro Christianis is taken literally) were against the death penalty, and so was Hippolytus of Rome (assuming he actually wrote Apostolic Tradition). And the statements by early Church Fathers cited in the support of the death penalty are often just as ambigious in positive content as Paul's statement in Romans. Every (non-apologist) history I can find describes Innocent I's statement declaring the death penalty permissible as a reversal of earlier church practice. So no, Paul is not give Christian magistrates the sword. It seems strange that he would, given that Christians worshipped a man who had been unjustly sentenced to death.

I know there's really no point in arguing. Dr. Feser simply can't take an honest look at the historical evidence without his entire worldview collapsing, so no amount of argument will convince him. And besides, this ship has sailed. No matter how much noise "faithful Catholics" in America make, the Church has been shifting on the death penalty for half a century, and the clock isn't going to be wound back. I confidently predict that those who believe in an infallible, unchanging, perfectly interally-consistent Church tradition that never develops in unexpected or seemingly contradictory ways will be forced into sedevacantism and probably open schism within the next 20 years, establishing a Pope-less Catholicism centered in America that requires absolute fidelity to its founders' interpretations of the Magisterium.

In other words, you'll wake up some time in the 2040s and realize that the real orthodoxy was the Protestants you became along the way.

Addendum: Something else that probably should have bothered me when I first read this post is Feser's claim (echoing Newman) that the presence of the death penalty in the Mosaic law constitutes some kind of insuperable difficulty for Christian opponents of the practice. As so often, the problem is the refusal of Thomists to take seriously Jesus's abrogation of the law of retaliation in favor of the law of mercy in the Sermon on the Mount ("You have heard it said... but I say to you..."). This is, of course, an old criticism of the Thomistic understand of justice: It just doesn't seem to leave any room for grace and mercy—only the mechanical implementation of the lex talonis. Aristotle, as it turns out, is not fully compatible with Christ. 

And anyone who runs afoul of the One True Philosophy™—even the Son of God—must give way.