‘To make natural death possible for all men means to scorn and threaten death in the world. To mock at death is certainly not to scorn life. To threaten death is to refrain from posing any threat to life. Since faith knows God and God alone as the boundary of man’s life, it is involved in social terms in a struggle against death. Hope in the God who in death shelters and surrounds us sets us free from egoistic concern about our own end. That which takes its place is a concern for the life of others. To every person a time is allotted so that in their own time they may also have their history. It is a matter for God and God alone to set life’s temporal limits. It is faith’s duty to protest openly against every attempt to claim the right to set temporal limits to human life. No man, no institution, no legal administration has the right to mark out the temporal boundaries of man’s finite life. The Christian has the duty to oppose actively every effort to gain control of death. In every sphere of life, to have death at one’s disposal is something thoroughly reprehensible. And if God has taken death upon himself in order to bind it to himself for ever, then death cannot any longer be regarded as a legal remedy. In the light of this, ‘capital punishment’ becomes a ‘crimen laesae maiestatis’, a ‘lèse-majesté’ against the crucified God’. – Eberhard Jüngel, Death: The Riddle and the Mystery (trans. Iain Nicol and Ute Nicol; Edinburgh: The Saint Andrew Press, 1975), 133-4.
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jasongoroncy.com 
Barth says much the same in Church Dogmatics III/4.
When turning to the issue of capital punishment, Barth touches on three common theories of punishment: (1) that which protects society; (2) that which demands retribution; (3) that which redeems. He lauds the third theory for its primary (though not exclusive) interest in the offender’s moral rehabilitation. “In the death penalty, however, this urgent need is completely set aside” (440). The offender is destroyed, judged to be irredeemable. The first theory treats punishment as a deterrent against further crime. Barth again finds the irrevocable nature of the death penalty to be both its greatest asset in rendering the offender harmless and its greatest liability in exercising justice beyond its ordained and limited abilities, “with usurped divinity” (445). The death penalty as punishment is an inner contradiction, one that leads to the orderly society renouncing its true being as such.
What is most interesting is his treatment of the second theory of retribution, which can rightly be taken theologically to be “an earthly representation of the retributive justice of God both to the transgressor himself and to the rest of society. But the question remains whether the death penalty can really be a reflection of the divine retribution, of the expiation which God requires” (442). It is interesting how quickly Barth jumps from the first to the second. Barth is distinguishing earthly justice from the ultimate justice towards evil, between the sins on earth and the problem of sin itself. And yet the earthly representation of justice can never seek the penalty of death, for it is only a sinful representation, one that does not have all the facts to make this judgment. Only God can judge the offender with such definite certainty.
For Barth, God has judged us all with definite certainty towards the debt owed to Him and to the goal of our acquittal, which He so desires. Barth writes:
“More important however, because more central, is the further point that on the Christian view the retributive justice of God has already found full and final expression, the expiation demanded by Him for all human transgression has already been made, the death sentence already imposed on human criminals has already been executed. God gave His only Son for this very purpose. In His death He exercised judgment according to His wonderful righteousness, and He did so once and for all for the sins of all men (442).
Since expiation has been achieved once and for all through one man’s death, we must not achieve retribution by our own merits, by killing the offender. “If what we are to attest in the sphere of human punishment is not a self-conceived, imaginary and lifeless justice, but the righteousness of the true God who has acted and revealed Himself in Jesus Christ, capital punishment will surely be the very last thing to enter our heads” (443). Thus, our justice must be an earthly representation of God’s justice in light of what God has done on the Cross, rather than simply repeating the Cross with each execution. The punishment of the offender must be done “in such a way that his life is affirmed and not denied as in capital punishment. Only thus can his punishment be a human reflection of the righteous action of God in His conflict with chaos” (443). This Christological move is particularly noteworthy as we step into the subject of war, where it does not play a role in his thinking.
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Chris,
Wow! Many thanks indeed. It’s been a while since I read CD III/4, and it is wonderfully helpful to hear this alongside Jüngel’s words. You are right to draw attention to the broader implications of positing such a christological anthropology. Why do you think Barth resisted pressing – or just did not see – the implications for our attitudes to war? This is a genuine question. I find similar tones in Forsyth’s criticism of pacifism.
PS. If your response is part of a larger essay that you’ve penned, I’d love to read the whole thing.
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