Mark

Kay,

Sure i agree about the passage in Deut. The point i was making though, was that for us- that is still a harsh punishment. Imagine now if countries introduced that kind of law- half of the Australian adolescents would be killed. But we know from the text that the reason that punishments were so severe is because the Israelites were to get rid of the ‘evil’ from among them. This is about a community of God honouring people. They were essentially to ‘kill’ any evil- we see the same thing with the conqering of the land do we not?

Now in relation to Calvin, why did he do those things we consider ‘horrible’? He was applying almost the same principle. Now don’t here me wrong that i am applauding what he did- i do not. The Israelites had an imperative from the Lord to do such things, Calvin did not. Jesus shows us in the NT how we should live- based around love. However many in Calvin’s time were trying to sanctify the people. In order to do this they ‘purged’ the evil from the Church (in this case false teaching).

So although i do not recommend we act the way Calvin did, i can see why he did it. Do you understand what i am trying to say?