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Originally Posted by Phage
Well it is hardly my fault if you cannot be bothered to state what you are talking about.
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I had three paragraphs. You quoted three passages. They were in order. Forgive my disbelief, but i find it hard to understand how there was confusion.
Read beyond the single passage in Romans 6. This is cosmic, not particular. This is not about execution. There is no indication that idea is even remotely being addressed here. Paul is explaining that outside of salvation in Christ, that there is no life. I understand you have this particular reading in your head, but it's an isogesis not an exegesis. You take a principle, and read it in to the text. You are not starting with Paul's words, but a commitment to the death penalty. Paul was executed by state authorities, for what it's worth. According to Acts, he repents of his participation in one (that of Timothy, the first Christian marytr). How you get a death penalty advocate out of Romans is to torture your reading of the text.
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Your argument might follow the correct pattern, but I refuted it simply by pointing out that your assumptions are by no means universally agreed on. The TFP is a multinational, multicultural, and most relevantly a multireligioned group. An argument that is based on assumptions many would not agree with is going to be useless to many on the forum, and I was suggesting that you find one with a more universal appeal.
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Thanks, but no thanks. Of course, TFP is not uniformally Christian. But there are Christians here, and there are people who contest what Christianity means here. I wrote to inform that section of debate, and for those who want to know....to explain why i had concluded an anti-death penalty ethic from Christian traditions and scriptures.
We're all carrying in assumptions about punishment, crime, justice, etc. Few are provable. Few are universal. We're stating assumptions, and the conclusions we draw. And that's not limited to religious perspectives.