Brian Hamilton

Criminal Justice

Before I begin, it seems necessary to declare myself: I am a total pacifist. From a Christian perspective, particularly from the Cross, I feel it necessary to refuse all forms of violence as means to solve any conflict. To resort to violence is to disregard the saving work of Christ from the powers of domination, and ignore his example of how to most completely defeat evil: through nonviolent suffering servanthood, to the point of pain and death. From this, it obviously follows that I cannot support the death penalty in any way, shape, or form—as a Christian. I must also make clear that my understanding of the issues at hand, and my suggestions therefor, are spoken as the Church for the Church, not necessarily for the society at large. I harbor no expectation that the vision I seek, the Kingdom of God, can manifest itself anywhere but in a community of transformed confessors. That said, I do not build this vision merely for the sake of building it—I pray for the Church to take it up and work for it within herself, hopefully bringing the world along with her to a more complete system. The vision I seek is not defined by effectiveness, but by obedience. The vision I seek is characterized not by harshness, but by subservience. The vision I seek is the Kingdom, and we must look to God to find it—the world as it lies will do us little good here.

The goal of a criminal justice system must be restoration or rehabilitation. The criminal justice system must be capable of bringing an accused criminal in, making room for reconciliation between transgressor and victim, and restoring the criminal to his or her right place in society. A criminal justice system based on a retributive model, a tit-for-tat approach, is doomed to fail; we will kill off every man, woman, and child before we find the one who is sinless—and we will likely crucify Him too. No, a righteous justice system is one that provides the path to forgiveness without violent or physical coercion. This act of violence would provide only another crime to punish. Again I remind you that the worth of this system is not measured by output, “number of crimes prevented,” but by faithfulness and obedience to a crucified Christ.

Is this system faithful? It is, so long as Christianity remains a discipleship of imitation. This is the way the Church must behave—forgiveness without regards to effectiveness, allowing reconciliation without forcing repentance—because this is the way God has acted towards us. In the Cross, God provides a path towards transformation, but refuses to force us into it. In the Cross, God finds a way to restore a fallen humanity to its right place with him. So too, then, must the Church act towards the world. When the Church is wronged, she forgives and provides a place for reconciliation with the hope of bringing the transgressor to her, as restored humanity.

Many will quickly object to the absurdity of a Church who refuses to restrain its evildoers. Such a Church, it is thought, would quickly die out. While we must maintain the example of Christ foremost in our minds—that as God vindicated Christ for his obedience through bodily resurrection, so will he vindicate a faithful Church—we would ignore our duty as a prophetic witness if we did not elaborate on the structure and point to hope in the current world for such a vision, for indeed it can be ephemerally effective. A restorative justice movement has already begun and has proved itself quite a powerful witness. Demonstrated most obviously in the post-Apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission of South Africa, a restorative justice system focuses on uncovering the truth of the transgression, facilitating communication between victim and offender, and offering chances for the offender to serve the victim as an act of penitence. Truth commissions have begun to spring up worldwide, in El Salvador, Peru, and even in the United Nations. Moreover, experiments with restorative justice have sprung up across the United States, and many forward-thinking universities have adopted restorative justice programs in hopes of nursing this fledgling system.

The Church cannot allow the atonement to escape her mind when she works through these issues. We remember, along with the Apostle Paul, that “God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8). When we transgress against God, God dies for us. Can we do any less as those who have been transformed by that death? Without entering into a lengthy discussion of what it means to die for humanity, we can at least understand that Christ’s life and death on a cross in meant as the ultimate act of reconciliation—even in the face of utter contempt, God refuses to react violently, instead sending the Son of Man to show us again how to live. While I’ve yet to fully develop my own understanding of the atonement, I must ardently refuse any notions of divine satisfaction or retribution being spilled in full on the Christ. Themes of imitation of Christ run deep throughout the gospels and the epistles, a theme which is nullified in full if we except Jesus from the norm in such a way. To say that Jesus died to quench God’s thirst for sinless blood is to make imitation foolish, for Jesus had to bear a load that we need not. On the contrary, a more complete biblical and theological understanding would suggest that he “who himself bore our sins in his own body on the tree” (Peter 2:24) did so to teach his people the ultimate way to deal with sin and evil, the way of a suffering servant. Indeed, the Israelites had already been charged with such a role many years before by Second Isaiah (Isaiah 40-55) with this ideal made flesh in Christ Jesus our Lord.

So we, the Church, refuse the death penalty, refuse a retributive justice system. We refuse these things first for the Church, for we recognize that a people transformed by a God who suffers on a Roman crucifix can do nothing other than accept the same fate with all joyfulness. We refuse these things not out of despair, but out of trust and patience—trust that God will vindicate the sufferers and transform the offenders, and patience that God will bring the day “that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow, in heaven and on earth and under the earth” (Phil. 2:10).

10 May 2004 |
tags: Theological Ethics