Retributive Justice--further thoughts

Brian Auten over at the Boars Head Tavern has drawn attention to my previous post and asked a very salient question about the latter portion: 

"How does this work if it’s about “redress of a wrong suffered” as well as innocents who are in ongoing-but-perhaps-not-immediately-clear danger?   That is, what happens when you come upon the someone who killed your mama three years ago, and you know that same someone is, or really appears to be, planning to kill all of the other mamas in your neighborhood?  I just wonder about the frequency of situations, particularly regarding state actions, where “redress of a wrong suffered” isn’t bound up in all sorts of connected concerns over the protection of innocents and tranquillitas ordinis."

Somewhat bizarrely, the ensuing discussion of my post over there has centered merely on the question of whether in my sentence "However, I’m with Paul on this one, who had no hesitation in calling himself “the chief of sinners” even when he clearly was not" I am "explaining away Scripture"  Be that as it may, Auten's question is a very good one, and one that I half-hoped someone would raise.

Essentially, what he's saying is that, in political practice, the distinction between retributive justice and what we might call "protective justice" (presumably there is a proper term for this, but not knowing it, I shall coin this one) tends to break down.  This objection requires some very careful thinking through, and here’s a first attempt.

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Reactions to the Assassination: An Attempt at Some Elucidations

(I posted a version of this on Facebook, as a follow-up to a flurry of discussion there yesterday; but here it is without all the links and references to comments from my Facebook interlocutors that I had interspersed.)

My initial reaction to the bin Laden news yesterday, justly perceived as somewhat flippant ("So we managed to assassinate an old man on dialysis sitting at home, along with a few of his family members. The Greatest Nation on Earth never ceases to impress me"), was, more than anything, an expression that I really just didn’t think this deserved the status of obsessive headline news and discussion, that we all ought to chill and get back to our daily lives.  However, I found myself quickly entangled in half-a-dozen threads of discussion about it, and attempting to field all manner of objections to my patriotism, sense of justice, and theological competence.  As everyone and their grandma has now weighed in on the news from their blog and/or Facebook/Twitter soapboxes, and as the discussion doesn’t appear likely to die down any time soon, I figured I might as well try to sort through the tangle a bit for those who, like me, feel that the discussion is in danger of degenerating into chaos.   

At first it appear that there are roughly three positions--(1) “MWUHAHAHA!  We killed him!  Rock on USA!”; (2) “Settle down, let’s rejoice in the execution of justice, but without undue pride, giddiness, or vindictiveness”; (3) “Um, shouldn’t we be like God and not rejoice in the death of a sinner, but wish rather that he should turn from his ways and live?”  (Most Christians I’ve seen in the discussion, for the record, seem to be happily in some version of (2), though there are certainly some who sound disturbingly like (1), and a few others, including myself, who have said something like (3).) However, on reflection, it appears to be a bit more complicated than that, and I’m realizing that it’s somewhat sterile to carry out the debate simply in terms of “Should we be happy or not?”  So I’m trying to parse out more carefully the issues at stake, and it seems that there are at least eight different points that are being made by various people who want to qualify in some way our exuberance.  

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Bin Laden is Dead: The Speech Obama Could Have Given

Obama’s speech last night about the assassination of bin Laden offered, on the whole, much to be appreciated.  Certainly, it avoided the excessive martyrology and jingoistic Americanism that has characterized other Presidential speeches.  And certainly, it was far better than many of the lamentably vengeful and nationalistic sentiments that it seems to have called forth from so many citizens.  But, if I may be so bold, what would Jesus say?  What might Obama’s speech have looked like if he’d really had courage and conviction?  I can’t really claim to know the right answer to that.  But here, at any rate, is what I might have wished for: 

My fellow Americans, after ten years and a million lives lost, I can announce to you today the death of Osama bin Laden, the man our country has long pursued as its arch-enemy.  It is not my purpose here to rejoice in this death or any death, but rather to recall with sadness all the deaths on that September day and on the bloody trail we have since pursued.  For all the harm he has done us, we did not, for our part, wish death on bin Laden; even our enemies deserve our sympathy.  Vengeance should not be sweet; the path of vengeance is the road to perdition.  Today, our forces closed in on bin Laden with the intention of capturing him and bringing him to due justice*; unfortunately, he was killed in the resulting firefight, as were members of his family around us.  

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