Killing and love

Biggar again, defending the Augustinian view that killing in some circumstances is not a violation of love of neighbor: “I may (intend to) kill an aggressor, not because I hate him, nor because I reckon his life worth less than anyone else’s, but because, tragically, I know of no other way to prevent him from perpetrating a serious injury on an innocent neighbour. My intentional killing is ‘loving,’ therefore, in two respects: first, its overriding aim is to protect the innocent from serious harm; and second, it acknowledges the aggressor’s equal dignity, it wishes him no evil, and it would gladly spare him if it could.”

On a similar note, Hays’s argument from the atonement, namely, that that God “deals with his enemies, not by killing them, but by seeking peace through ‘self-giving’ or ‘self-emptying service.’” Biggar argues on the contrary that in Romans “God is being likened to a civil magistrate, and his wrath to the execution of capital punishment.” Thus, “we should think of God as being prepared to respond to incorrigible sinners (should there be any) by authorizing their deaths, not at all because he wants them dead, but because he wants to secure the fulfillment of his creation, and because he cannot have the latter without the former. In this sense we may say that God ‘kills’ incorrigible sinners.”