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Originally Posted by The Avon Lady
And the fact remains that each religion has its own very different claims of what G-d said and wants.
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Yup they do, that's what makes them different, their interpretation of what God says and wants (and not their shared conception of the deity itself).
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Originally Posted by Skybird
The deciding criterion here is what the centre of Christianity - the Christ - has preached on this matter. And Jesus did not allow or encouraged to leave penalties like this to the justice of man. The medieval was not an age of christian faith - but the absence of true Christian faith.
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You have this all wrong. Christ preached that man should obey the laws of men, and those Christians who support Capital Punishment (and who also believe this support is in accordance with their Christian faith) cite that passage I gave from Romans as proof that it doesn't violate His teachings.
You are also wrong historically, as well as theologically, since Capital Punishment was practiced long after the Enlightenment began and only began to become less widespread very recently. Here is part of a very good essay by a Professor of Theology at Taylor University:
"Even the so-called left wing of the Protestant Reformation (from which domain modern religious opposition to capital punishment is said to derive) endorsed the death penalty. The Schleitheim Confession (1527), an exemplary document adopted by the Swiss Brethren, reads: "The sword is an ordinance of God .... Princes and Rulers are ordained for the punishment of evildoers and putting them to death." This Anabaptist declaration concurs with the Lutheran Formula of Concord (1580), which prescribes for "wild and intractable men" a commensurate "external punishment."
"In light of penal excesses during the late medieval and early modern period of England’s history, not a few influential eighteenth- and nineteenth century thinkers called for the abolition of the death penalty. Among its opponents were Montesquieu, David Hume, Benjamin Franklin, Thomas Paine, Caesare Beccaria, Voltaire, Jean Jacques Rousseau, Benjamin Rush, Jeremy Bentham and Karl Marx.
Widespread use of torture and the inadequate state of criminal law gave rise to a growing movement in western Europe to abolish the death penalty or greatly restrict its use. The abolitionist argument, however, was fueled not by the Church but by Enlightenment thinkers who were notably secular in their worldview."
http://pewforum.org/deathpenalty/res...reader/19.php3