Corporal punishment 'not a biblical doctrine' -May 17, 2002

The case proposed in the Court of Appeal that corporal punishment is a biblical doctrine has been challenged by ekklesia.

Forty schools, spearheaded by the Christian Fellowship School in Liverpool, want a change in the law to allow them to use corporal punishment with parents consent.

Their attempt to challenge legislation banning smacking in schools by claiming it did not apply to independents was rejected by the High Court last year.

Their present case is based upon the premise that corporal punishment is part of a religious doctrine protected by the European Convention on Human Rights.

Paul Diamond, representing the schools, is reported to have told Lords Justices Buxton and Rix and Lady Justice Arden today that Corporal punishment was a doctrine advocated in the Bible and was therefore part of the ethos of evangelical schools.

However such a claim has been challenged by the theological think tank Ekklesia.

Dr Lloyd Pietersen a lecturer in New Testament, said: "It is incorrect to claim that corporal punishment is a biblical doctrine. Christian advocates of this view usually base their claim on some passages in the Hebrew scriptures (especially Proverbs) without taking into account the difference that Jesus potentially makes to all relationships. I cannot think of a single New Testament passage that supports the idea of corporal punishment. There are however a number of passages that challenge it."

Citing the example of texts attributed to St Paul, Dr Pietersen continued; “Neither is the challenge confined to the gospels. In Ephesians 6:4 (a passage specifically dealing with parents and child discipline) the writer remarkably fails to mention corporal punishment - unlike many Graeco-Roman and Hellenistic Jewish writers of the same time. This is despite the fact that the advice given in that passage is actually similar to that of Menander, the classical Greek playwright, who stated: 'a father who is always threatening does not receive much reverence' and 'one should correct a child not by hurting but by persuading' ".