Fair enough. Reciprocal jurisdiction can keep every individual officeholder reachable by some domestic process. I don't dispute that it can be done.
What I dispute is the antecedent claim that justice requires every individual officeholder to remain reachable by some domestic punitive jurisdiction in the first place. If that requirement is established, reciprocal jurisdiction may be one means of satisfying it. But the possibility of that mechanism does not establish the moral requirement for it.
We already agree that guilt does not create jurisdiction. So the king's guilt establishes what punishment he deserves, not who has authority to impose it.
You keep asking for the antecedent moral principle underlying my position. Here it is:
Justice determines what punishment a wrongdoer deserves, but punishment may be imposed only by rightful authority. Vengeance belongs ultimately to God, and human punitive authority exists by delegation from Him.
Romans 12:19 says:
“Beloved, do not avenge yourselves, but rather give place to wrath; for it is written, ‘Vengeance is Mine, I will repay,’ says the Lord.”
The immediate command is to individuals, but the principle is clear: recognizing that punishment is deserved does not authorize you to administer it. Vengeance belongs to God, and no man may exercise punitive authority except insofar as that authority has been rightfully delegated to him.
Romans 13 explains why civil government may punish:
“For there is no authority except from God, and the authorities that exist are appointed by God.”
The magistrate is God's minister, “an avenger to execute wrath on him who practices evil.”
There is the authority flow. Vengeance is God's, and civil government exercises punitive authority because God delegates it.
Therefore:
The fact that punishment is deserved does not determine the scope of God's delegation of human authority to impose it.
Civil government has a real duty to punish murder within its rightful jurisdiction. That does not mean every murderer will necessarily receive temporal punishment at human hands. No righteous government can guarantee that. Crimes go undiscovered, guilty men escape conviction, and courts sometimes reach the wrong judgment.
I am not equating those failures with the deliberate allocation of jurisdiction. The narrower point is that the command to punish murderers establishes a duty to administer justice faithfully; it does not, merely by stating that duty, establish that every conceivable murderer must necessarily remain reachable by some domestic punitive process.
So I am not proposing:
“Murderers deserve death, except kings.”
If the king murders, he deserves the punishment due murder. His office does not reduce his guilt or change what justice requires.
What differs is jurisdiction.
Likewise, saying civil government is “constitutionally forbidden” to punish the king misstates my position. That assumes some domestic authority would otherwise rightfully possess punitive jurisdiction over him and is merely prohibited from exercising it. My position is that no domestic human authority rightfully stands in that jurisdictional relation to the highest earthly authority in the first place.
The king's guilt remains. The punishment he deserves remains. God's jurisdiction remains.
What does not follow is that another human jurisdiction must therefore exist to impose it.
Agreed. Moral principle comes first.
But rightful authority is itself a moral principle. We must ask both what punishment justice requires and who has authority to administer it.
Nor did Bob first invent downward authority and then restrict justice to fit it. Scripture begins the authority flow above human government:
“There is no authority except from God.”
God's delegation of authority to men is the original downward flow of authority.
That does not, by itself, prove every detail of how God's human delegates must be organized. Bob's further argument is that multiplying reciprocal coercive jurisdictions among those delegates does not eliminate the problem of final earthly authority; it changes how that authority is organized.
But Romans 13 establishes the relevant principle here: human punitive authority is derivative. Government does not acquire jurisdiction merely because punishment remains due.
Agreed. The possibility of corruption, capture, deadlock, or abuse does not prove reciprocal government intrinsically unjust. Monarchy can be corrupted too.
That is a prudential argument, relevant to your objections concerning tyranny and civil war and to Bob's argument about which structure is more likely to produce just leadership. It is not my antecedent moral principle.
But neither does calling reciprocal jurisdiction “separation of powers” establish that justice requires it.
Reciprocal jurisdiction can keep each officeholder reachable by another component of government, but every checker remains inside the same fallible governmental structure, and the structure as a whole can itself be captured. The law it applies may be objective, but its enforcement machinery is not independent of the governmental system it is judging.
That is not analogous to God's position over Israel's kings. God was not another component checking the king. He stood genuinely above the human structure and was the source of its authority.
Agreed. If Bob's arrangement is unjust, then I will reject it.
But calling it unjust assumes the point in dispute.
And Saul gives us a biblical example of the distinction I'm making.
Saul was murderous. God had rejected him. David had already been anointed to succeed him, and David had Saul physically within his power.
Yet David did not infer punitive jurisdiction from Saul's guilt:
“Let the LORD judge between you and me, and let the LORD avenge me on you. But my hand shall not be against you.”
And later:
“As the LORD lives, the LORD shall strike him, or his day shall come to die, or he shall go out to battle and perish.”
Saul remained guilty and deserving of judgment. David nevertheless did not infer from that fact that he possessed jurisdiction to impose it.
Your answer has been that God stood above Saul and possessed jurisdiction over him.
Exactly.
Saul therefore demonstrates that justice and deserved punishment do not themselves require a human punitive superior over the highest human ruler. The human authority structure terminated under God.
Israel's direct prophetic administration was unique, and Bob does not reproduce it. But that does not establish that, when Israel's unique prophetic administration is absent, God's superior jurisdiction necessarily devolves to another human office.
The narrower principle is sufficient: the absence of another human authority possessing punitive jurisdiction over the highest human ruler does not itself place that ruler beyond justice, nor does his guilt itself require such a human authority to exist.
So my antecedent moral principle is not royal immunity or an exception to justice:
Justice determines what punishment the guilty deserve. Vengeance belongs ultimately to God. Human rulers administer punishment only through authority delegated by Him and therefore only within their rightful jurisdiction. Punishment remaining due does not itself create another human jurisdiction to impose it. Where human punishment does not reach, God's justice does not cease: “Vengeance is Mine, I will repay.”
You have shown that reciprocal jurisdiction can keep the king domestically reachable.
What you still need to establish is that justice requires the king to remain domestically reachable in the first place.