In the wake of the execution of the Bali bombers, Sydney Anglicans have been forced to reflect again on the ethics of capital punishment.
In the past week, one Australian Anglican bishop went public with a call on the Indonesian government to spare their lives.
Bishop Philip Huggins of the Northern and Western Region of the Anglican Diocese of Melbourne wrote to the Indonesian ambassador to urge the Indonesian Government to commute the death sentences of the Bali bombers to life imprisonment.
The three men found guilty of planning the bombings were executed by firing squad just after midnight, in the early hours of Sunday morning.
The bombings on the nightclub strip of Bali's Kuta Beach in 2002 killed 202 people, including 88 Australians.
In a letter to His Excellency Tekeku Mohammed Hamzeh Thaveb, Bishop Philip Huggins acknowledged that the Bali bombers seemed "unrepentant" and said he could not imagine the grief and anguish of the families of the bombers' innocent victims.
He said however that to shoot the bombers would be a "momentous ethical decision".
"Understanding life as a sacred gift, we are encouraged to give and forgive, ever deepening our holy communion," he said. "Time and again we see the resolutely unrepentant take a redemptive path" Because of this resurrection faith, we must appeal against the Bali bombers’ death sentence."
Bishop Huggins said that the matter was one of theological conviction, "mindful too of wanting the best possible relationships between Indonesians and Australians".
How the death penalty divides
The issue of capital punishment divides Christians due to its theological complexity, the Rev Dr Andrew Cameron acknowledged in 2005, when Australian Nguyen Tuong Van was executed in Singapore for drug trafficking, and again in 2006, when Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein was hanged for ordering the execution of 148 Iraqi villagers.
Part of the difficulty also springs from the "paradox" of what being made in the image of God means.
"People matter so much that to kill one of us seems to demand no less than that the life of the killer be forfeit," he wrote.
"Yet to take the life of the killer seems to undermine the very preciousness of humanity that we seek to protect."
According to Old Testament law, which "repeatedly invokes the death penalty", "true justice still includes such weighty punishment," Dr Cameron writes.
"But for others, the death of Christ is the life taken to requite for the world's horrible evils," which means that "now is the time for mercy".
Dr Cameron suggests the solution may be to try to make sense of each of these views rather than simply choosing one of them.
"In the overall sweep of the Bible, judgment is committed into the hands of various rulers, and not to the biblical text. That is, a human being is needed to make discerning decisions about specific situations before them," he wrote.
"Even the OT law needed to be wisely applied. It was not an absolute system of mandatory sentences."
Dr Cameron has also encouraged a sober appreciation and understanding of the function of Old Testament law.
"It is wrong to think that OT law is "the law' for Christians and others today. It is also wrong to think that it is flawed and defective, or obsolete and irrelevant, and in no way the word of God to us."
Justice and the Government
In their administration of justice, Dr Cameron advised that governments must satisfy the public need and desire for retribution, rehabilitation and deterrence.
Further, this looks different in different countries and contexts. In the case of Iraq, for example, the culture had not followed the same logic as Australia “of the death sentence, through the cross, to a system when lifetime imprisonment is preferred as being at least a little more merciful than death”.
Justice may not then be seen to be done through life imprisonment, in the same way that it would in an Australian context, Dr Cameron explains.
“From this distance, we cannot offer a meaningful opinion, because we don't know what justice looks like in that culture. But it is certainly clear that for that society to function well, justice for Saddam's crimes must be seen to be done,” Dr Cameron wrote at the time of Mr Hussein’s execution.
“What that judgment will entail cannot easily be judged from this distance " which is why judges there are tasked to make that call.”
Yet Dr Cameron has also argued judges could not "pretend to replace God".
"Their judgments are provisional, and in a sense, incomplete, because only God can judge in a way that finally satisfies us. They cannot, for example, make a criminal repent and weep for his sins: if only they could.
"And in addition, each politician, policeman, judge and prison officer will one day face the judgement of God, as will each criminal. We therefore always know ourselves as a kind of "equal' to the one we judge."
PHOTO: publik16
