I'm not sure you and I can agree on this use of "iconic." The death penalty (and death itself) are real and imminent, insofar as they affect one's ability to repent and represent the unnatural separation of what were intended to be united in eternity (body and soul). The real icon that you're looking for is exile, which would imitate death in the separation from the presence of God and His people; in this sense, the exile from Paradise was both iconic (in that it represented what our sins would do to us) and imminent (a real separation from God), and this carries over to the ambiguity in language regarding the consequence of being "cut off from the people" for certain offenses under the Law. Imprisonment without parole is indeed iconic of death in that the person will never have the chance to rejoin society, and is instead forced into an ascetical life to atone for this with tears and contrition.
Also, expanding on the iconic vs imminent point for a moment - the points I raised in the earlier post about the purposes of the death penalty are both iconic and practical. Protection and prevention don't just reflect the two great commandments - but for Israel (and especially between the original Pascha and the end of Joshua's life) they also were necessary in an urgent way, since they dwelt in the presence of the Living God (through the presence of the Spirit/Name, and the Son/Angel of the Lord/Word of the Lord). While they were expecting an earthly Paradise, they had indeed begun to participate in Paradise when the Lord dwelt in their midst, leading them and guiding them, fighting for them and resting with them. But they needed to be protected from their own sins, which would be consumed in the presence of God's holiness, and so a life under the law (as God intended it) and constant repentance were critical, and willful disobedience in the direction of the sins that stain the land (murder, idolatry, consuming the life of others, and sexual immorality especially - the commandments that were to apply to both Jew and Gentile, resident and visitor) must be dealt with for the preservation of the community.
Great point about using exile. I'm working with a project involving reintroducing exile, largely out of scope here, but I agree that exile also has iconic character, solves a lot of practical and pedagogical issues relative to other types of punishment, and has a lot of excellent Biblical precedent; I think it could be a valuable part of our "toolkit". The biggest issue I run into is that few places want to take in exiles "generically" (there are exceptions for asylum and other specific cases), especially without trying to repunish them and thus kind of undermining the practice.
However, death retains an iconic character apart from exile. There are positive reasons, such as allowing the convicted to participate—in a very literal way, kind of like the thieves—in Christ's crucifixion; life in prison removes that. There are also negative reasons, such as what abolishing the death penalty can say about death itself: that we should avoid physical death at all costs (strains of humanism), that Christ's death abolished the need for our deaths (linked to PSA and all sorts of other non-Orthodox teachings), and even that we *fear* death!
I was never interested enough in JSM, so I'm not sure I get the point of the reference. However, the martyrs were not put in the place to defend the innocent - they were put individually (even when rounded up collectively, like the 40 Martyrs of Sebaste) to the choice of apostasy or death; one of their fellow martyrs "defending" them would have blunted their choice and seriously changed the trajectory of the otherwise salvific encounter (not just for them, but for the witnesses). It's only "turning the other cheek" if you're the one doing it - if it's taken out of your control, then it's something else.
Ok, I think we might be mostly in agreement there, then. I would only caution that the "turn the other cheek" need not involve the start-to-finish consent of the turnee: they are given the grace to accept the suffering as suffering in Christ at any point, so the "control" issue is really quite fuzzy. And we have martyric stories involving infants, parents with kids, and entire trapped congregations where the "individual" may also beside the point, so I did not want us to fall into modern philosophy's claims that [modernistic] "free will" and individualism somehow underpin our ability to "turn the cheek", or that we cannot "turn the cheek" beyond our individual selves.
The Church is called to be prophetic, and so is never limited in its scope (only in its control) - but the state is not some mindless independent agent. It is made up of people, and those people have to account for their decision making. If we claim to be Christians, then we have to find Christian ways to accomplish our goals (correction, defense, etc.). Sometimes this means fighting, but often it does not.
This is an interesting topic that gets more deeply into the "What is Church?" question, contrasting it with Kingdom Of God, and so on. I think it is itself prophetic that the Roman/Byzantine Churches, even during ascendancy, marked off clear canonical lines regarding how a communing member was to use force, violence, and death. So I'd suggest that the same person can act in their Church and State capacity (which I believe *should* be an instantiation Kingdom in the same way local Church is an instantiation of Church, despite the failures on our end regarding both) in different ways—without compromising the simultaneous unity of ultimate purpose but difference of temporal methodology between both of them.
I'm not sure this sentiment can be reconciled with either the Scriptures nor our (at least American) principles of jurisprudence, which would both promote some version of "better to let 99 guilty go free than have 1 wrongly convicted." The Lord is being very deliberate when He says "Vengeance is mine" - He is the only one who can accomplish true Justice. In the meantime, we do the best we can with fear and trembling - and we should look soberly on any method of correction/discipline/justice/etc. that both shortens the time for repentance and actively forces others to sin to carry it out.
Yes, it is not a very Enlightenment-friendly idea—which is a good sign, in my book! And I totally agree about true justice only coming from the Trinity, but that justice (occasionally called "vengeance") is God's *regardless*: death penalty, incarceration, caning, spanking, grounding. So, despite those each being quite different and having vastly different temporal effects, the principle still applies to all of them. And the "sin to carry it out" issue also applies here somewhat equally (in that sin is sin), if we are not going to make distinction between murder and execution: for example, how is incarceration not just state-sponsored kidnapping? So again, these arguments, while fascinating, don't really push me to favor another punishment over the death penalty, but rather point to the sobriety which we must have when carrying out *any* punishment, no matter how seemingly small.
