On this
date, August 24, 2012, Anders Behring Breivik was sentenced to 21 years of preventive detention. I will post the Christian article for the death penalty
from Albert Mohler.
PAGE
TITLE:
http://www.christianpost.com/
ARTICLE TITLE: The
Post-Christian Condition – Anders Breivik and the Limitations of Justice
DATE: Friday
April 20, 2012
AUTHOR: Albert
Mohler
AUTHOR
INFORMATION: Richard Albert Mohler, Jr. (born
October 19, 1959), is an American theologian and the ninth president of
Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.
 |
|
Albert Mohler
|
The Post-Christian Condition –
Anders Breivik and the Limitations of Justice
Fri, Apr.
20, 2012 Posted: 10:13 AM EDT
The trial
of Anders Behring Breivik represents one of the greatest tests of human justice
in decades. Breivik stood in an Oslo courtroom this week and declared: "I
admit to the actions, but not to the guilt." The "actions," of
course, were the killing of 77 people on July 22, 2011. Eight were killed in a
car bomb in Oslo. Breivik then shot 69 people to death on Utoya Island - most
of them teenagers and young people involved in a summer camp sponsored by one
of Norway's major political parties.
Breivik
has celebrated his murderous actions in court, calling his massacre the most
"spectacular" event in recent European history. Having admitted to
the killings, Breivik told the court, "I would do it again."
He may
have an opportunity to do so. Norwegian law allows Breivik to be imprisoned for
only 21 years, even if found guilty of all 77 killings. Officials in Norway
have attempted to assure their fellow citizens that Breivik is unlikely to be
released, but the law allows criminals to be held in captivity after their
sentence only on psychological grounds that represent a threat, and Breivik has
been found sufficiently sane to stand trial.
How can
this be? What sane nation would allow for a maximum sentence of 21 years in
prison for premeditated murder - much less the calculated killing of 77 people?
Breivik
is yet another example of a criminal type that is, by now, all too familiar to
us. He is driven by an unfathomable hatred, largely directed at Muslims and
those he claims are allowing Muslims to infiltrate Norway and subvert its
national identity. He dares to pose as a "Christian warrior" even as
he repudiates the essence of Christianity by his terrorism. He will be allowed
to make a full defense in court, spewing his hatreds.
Meanwhile,
the world stands in wonder at the fact that a guilty verdict on all counts can
produce only a sentence of 21 years in prison - and Norway's prisons are
infamously plush. What is going on here?
The horrifying
case of Anders Behring Breivik has opened a window into the reality of
Scandinavian justice - and that window also reveals the shape of justice in a
post-Christian world.
The
Scandinavian nations are, according to many sociologists, the most radically
secularized nations on earth. A study undertaken by sociologist Peter Berger
years ago rated Sweden as the world's most secular nation, with neighbouring
Norway close behind. But the Scandinavian nations are not merely secular; they
are specifically post-Christian. The specific religious worldview they have
lost or rejected is that of Christianity - the faith that shaped the culture of
these nations for many centuries.
Christianity
produces a system of laws and justice that puts a high premium on both personal
moral responsibility and the sanctity of human life. For this reason, the
punishment of murderers has been taken with great seriousness. Those who take a
human life with premeditation were understood to forfeit their own.
The
rejection of the Christian worldview and the loss of biblical moral instincts
produces a very different system of justice. Norway abolished the death penalty
in 1902. Later, the nation abolished the sentence of life in prison, claiming
that it was too extreme. As Newsweek's Stefan Theil has reported,
"Normally, even murderers are fully eligible for parole after just a few
years in prison."
As for
the "prisons" themselves, Theil explains:
"Take Halden Prison, a maximum-security facility for murderers and rapists a few miles from the Swedish border. Completed last year for $280 million to house 250 inmates, its living quarters are bright and airy, with mint-green walls and IKEA-style furniture in varnished natural wood. Looking more like a college dorm than a maximum-security jail, each cell comes with a flat-screen TV, a private bath, and a large unbarred window. Inmates take cooking classes and work out with personal trainers; there's a deluxe gym with a rock-climbing wall as well as a professional music studio for prisoners' bands. Half the guards are women, which prison governor Are Hoidal says creates a less aggressive atmosphere. For the same reason, the guards don't carry weapons and freely mingle with the inmates. Prisoners even fill out questionnaires to rate the level of service."
At one
point, Theil declares the obvious: Norway "considers the idea of
punishment barbaric."
The loss
of the Christian worldview often comes with a diminishment of both personal
responsibility and the sense of punitive justice. Add to this the redefinition
of human life and its value. The result is a nation that takes pride in a
notoriously lax system of criminal justice - a nation that considers punishment
itself to be barbaric.
Standing
in that Oslo courtroom, Anders Breivik stated that he would prefer the death
penalty to a "pathetic" sentence of 21 years. He, at least, seems to
understand the scale of his crimes. "There are only two just and fair
outcomes in this case," he insisted in court, "Acquittal or capital
punishment."
The
biblical roots of the death penalty for murder are found in texts like Genesis
9:5-6. Rooted in God's covenant with Noah, the text reads: "And for your
lifeblood I will require a reckoning: from every beast I will require it and
from man. From his fellow man I will require a reckoning for the life of man.
'Whoever sheds the blood of man, by man shall his blood be shed, for God made
man in his own image.'"
As Claus
Westermann, one of the most famous Old Testament scholars of the twentieth
century explained, this text indicates that God expects murderers to be
punished with death. "The execution of the death penalty by humans is the
carrying out of the command of God."
Every
human life is sacred precisely because every single human being is made in
God's image. Murder is, Westermann explained, "a direct attack on God's
right of dominion."
He
commented further: "Here in Genesis 9 murder is something utterly on its
own; nothing can be compared with it. Throughout the whole sweep of human
history, the murderer by his action despoils God."
And yet,
in another statement from his commentary on this text, Westermann points
straight to the reason that a post-Christian culture loses its moral confidence
in the punishment of murderers. He states: "A community is only justified
in executing the death penalty insofar as it respects the unique right of God
over life and death and insofar as it respects the inviolability of human life
that follows therefrom."
Once
those convictions and moral intuitions are lost, the death penalty no longer
makes sense. Eventually, even the idea of punishment itself loses all cultural
credibility.
The world
is watching closely as the trial of Anders Behring Breivik takes place in Oslo.
The trial is now an international spectacle. But, much more than Norway's
justice system is on display. That Oslo courtroom is also revealing what
remains of an understanding of criminal justice and criminal responsibility
when the Christian worldview fades away. The post-Christian condition is fully
on display in that courtroom. The man who committed the worst single-handed
mass murder in Europe since World War II is on trial - and the maximum term to
which he can be sentenced amounts to less than 3.3 months for each of the 77
people he murdered.
R. Albert
Mohler, Jr.
No comments:
Post a Comment