In his chapter on punishment, O'Donovan carefully distinguishes between divine and human punishment so as to show human punishment its limited scope. But in doing so, he shows that punishing is something that God does:
Ontologically native to God, punishment takes some excusing in terms of extrinsic goods, when practices among consanguinous humankind. Ways of Judgment p.114
It is a side-comment only, but a huge statement in the context of contemporary theology: punishment - ie, 'a judgment enacted on the person, property, or liberty of the condemned party’ is something not foreign but rather proper to God, requiring no other justification other than that it is an exercise of his supreme dominion.
No comments:
Post a Comment