Then leave justice to the State, else when discussing justice as a Christian be sure to remember the dispensation you are under.
1. "Dispensation" talk is almost meaningless to me.
2. You've misunderstood my point. This is perhaps my fault. My point when I say: "I'll leave mercy, etc. to the theologians,"
is this: the State is not a giant church. The body politic, i.e., the political society is not a congregation of church-goers.
It very well might be the case that the citizens of a given country are religious, and their conduct is religiously inspired, but the operations of the State are not in and of themselves religious acts. They are political, secular acts.
The State simply does not, cannot and should not concern itself with these other-worldly religious questions. It does, can only and should only concern itself with matters of justice in this world "here below," so to speak.
Thus, if you insist on talking about religious matters, I'll simply have to wave them off and say: "I'm sorry, but I'm talking about politics, not theology."
If you ever think to commit adultery, the moment you think it, before you even act on the thought, you will be dead in sin. The wages of any sin is spiritual death. Do you need a government to stop you from committing adultery when God's punishment is instant and more severe? Hopefully you don't think eternal death is a lighter punishment than execution or a beating.
Again, these considerations, whether true or not, are irrelevant to the question of how the State should operate, what laws would be just, etc.
At any rate, you have denied one of my premises: "When dealing with a crime, if the more severe is permissible, then the less severe is permissible." You deny that Moses could have prescribed a less severe penalty than death by stoning for adultery.
Anything else, you say, would have been unjust. And yet you insist that it's perfectly just for other societies not only not to punish adulterers in the same way, but to impose no penalty at all ("no penalty" being much, much less severe than "death by stoning")?
But you must understand if I find this utterly incoherent.