Gordon Clark: A Lower Morality (The Southern Presbyterian Journal)

1959. A Lower Morality. The Southern Presbyterian Journal. 3. May 20

A Lower Morality

Along with the cheapening of marriage and the condoning of divorce for any cause, another instance of the lowering of moral standards is the wide-spread attack on capital punishment. Recently the news services have reported the Governor of Florida as saying, "Only God can give human life; man should not take it away."

Such a statement has little logic to commend it. If all our knowledge of God comes by revelation, and if God's revelation explicitly allows and even commands capital punishment, then the statement quoted is an affront to God. Now, as a matter of fact, God's revelation indeed commands capital punishment, both in the Old Testament and in the New.

But perhaps those who make the original statement neither believe the Bible nor base their knowledge of God on revelation. Then we must ask how they obtain any knowledge of God. Though the arguments are rather long and technical, and therefore cannot be reproduced here, it can pretty well be shown that man either has no knowledge of God at all or that he receives it by revelation.

The Florida Governor is also reported as saying (and if he did not say it, other people have , "the prospect of life imprisonment is a far worse prospect than death itself."

Are we then to believe that those who oppose capital punishment are motivated by a desire to find a worse punishment? Perhaps they can add torture to life imprisonment.

Of course this is not what they mean. They pose as humanitarians. But for this very reason their statement that life imprisonment is worse than death shows up their hypocrisy. They cannot have it both ways. They pose as alleviating the penalty while advocating something worse.

It is also claimed that capital punishment does not deter. And since deterrence is supposed to be the reason for the penalty, capital punishment should be abolished.

Again, there is little logic to such ideas. Omitting another lengthy discussion to show that deterrence is not the main reason for inflicting a penalty, one may ask does imprisonment for theft, for rape, for drunkenness deter? If failure to deter is a reason for abandoning penalties, then all penalties might as well be abandoned.

But as a matter of fact, capital punishment does deter. I have never known an executed murderer to commit murder again. Capital punishment is a perfect deterrent. Life imprisonment is not. Murderers commit murders in jail. And however much humanitarians assert that murderers should not be paroled or pardoned, other humanitarians, or the same ones when we are not looking, contrive their release. Remember Loeb and Leopold: one murdered in prison, the other freed though Bobby Franks remains dead.

Crime can never be eradicated; but stricter laws and stricter law-enforcement would be of great help. What would be of equal help would be a conversion of this lawless nation to Christian standards of morality. Murder would not be minimized nor divorce condoned. And the theories of non-Christian criminologists would have little influence.

— G. H. C.