This week's commandment is #5: "You shall not murder."Easy enough to understand, except when it comes to defense against an intruder -- or when a person is in the military -- or when a person is a judge who makes decisions about the death penalty -- or when it comes to what we call "involuntary manslaughter" -- like driving too fast and accidentally hitting another car and someone dying as a result.
And what about euthanasia? Or what about a medical doctor who consults with a family and takes a person off life support?
So, what is murder? Some would say it is unauthorized taking of someone's life, as one finds in Exodus 21:12, Leviticus 24:17 or Deuteronomy 27:24. Also important is Numbers 35:20-21 where the sense of "murder" makes the meaning clear.
At the bottom of this commandment is a double consideration: humans are made in God's image or are Eikons of God and in a human is "blood" -- the life (Gen 9:6). ["Whoever sheds human blood, by other humans must his blood be shed; for in God's image God has made humankind."]
But what about Jesus? What does he say?
The fundamental relationship of humans to God and to others is love according to Jesus: Love God and love your neighbor as yourself. This fundamental relationship anchors the command not to murder.
It is not that Jesus values the sanctity of life -- which I find to be an abstraction -- but that he values the sanctity of persons, persons made as God's Eikons who are loved by God and therefore to be loved by his followers.
This forces the question of whether or not Jesus thereby moves beyond the Old Testament command to prohibit all killing, including death penalty and war killings, or whether he affirmed those traditions. Clearly Christians have not always agreed on this one. While most of the Reformers were in favor of the permissibility of killing in both war and the legal system, the Anabaptists believed -- and still do -- and I'm one of them -- that killing through the death penalty and in war are contrary to the way of Jesus and therefore contrary to what followers of Jesus are called to do. I believe this is the plain teaching of Matthew 5:38-48.
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In a perfect world (what a way to start an opinion!) I would trust our system of justice to determine guilt or innocence and, yes, I would find it a consistent ethic to be anti-abortion and pro-death penalty for murder. To make the statement that "whoever sheds human blood, by other humans his blood be shed; for in God's image God has made humankind" means that this action is taken as a community, making a clear statement about the wickedness of murder, and done with regret, not triumphalism. But, can I trust our system of justice to determine guilt or innocence? This really pulls the rug right out from under it for me.
Weighed in the scales you make it seem that pacifism and just war are balanced out in church history, as in some of the Reformers believed in just war and the Anabaptists did not. Isn't it your impression that the anabaptist position is such a minority opinion through the wide sweep of NT interpretation in the church that it fights for air? It's a real position and it has serious arguments to make. But it has never been widely held in the church (though Ben Witherington makes the case the early church fathers were largely pacifist - of this I am not sure). In seminary I wanted to write a paper on this for ethics class and the professor would not accept my proposal. He said the issue was essentially settled for just war and wanted me to choose something a bit more controversial. It also seems to me that pacifism is a piece with the "trajectory" model of interpretation. In this model we draw conclusions about where the New Testament teachings will lead even if they do not explicitly assert the conclusions we have reached, eg., slavery is not explicitly forbidden but NT principles will lead to the eradication of slavery. I think this is true enough, but it is a model that requires a high degree of checks and balances. I do not think pacifism is a conclusion that has enough support in the NT. I teach in college many wounded vets who are Christians who will live the rest of their lives paying a very severe price for their service. I think the church is ambivalent about how to honor soldiers and the profession of soldiering. I am actually researching how churches support and do not support vets at the level of other groups that gain more immediate attention - immigrants, AIDS victims, etc. Soldiering is one of those professions that will disappear in the fullness of the kingdom, along with physicians and lawyers. Since that is true maybe we even now feel the ambivalence of vigorous engagement with communities whose very existence symbolize the "now" of the "now-not yet" duality of the kingdom.
Tim @ 6,
Same God talking to 2 different groups at 2 different times. Or did Jesus not say "you heard this, but I'm saying this"?
Scot said, "I believe this is the plain teaching of Matthew 5:38-48."
Actually, I agree with Scot on this issue in nearly all respects (and the potential quibbles aren't worth getting into here). Still, the fact of such strong disagreement among Christians (perhaps especially "Bible Believing" Christians who most frequently cite "plain teachings" as their basis for their beliefs) is why I feel that appeals to "plain teaching" are best avoided.
Travis,
Thanks for your reply! It's true that God of the bible sometimes tell people to do different things than others, for example: "Of all the creatures living in the water of the seas and the streams, you may eat any that have fins and scales..." That's not a statement of morality, just an dietary instruction to a specific group.
The problem is that the verse above isn't merely an instruction. Instead, it is a moral proposition: Because human life is in the image of God, justice requires murder forfeit the life of the murderer.
That proposition can be true, or false, but not both, simultaneously, if wish to be rational. If God asserted both (earlier versus later), then God has changed his mind about a universal statement of truth. Or perhaps we're saying God wrongly phrased a situational ethic (there is no absolute rule) as a universal, or the writer got it wrong?
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