Violence & the Cross.

Thank you for Joseph Komonchak's "The Violence of the Cross" (January 28). Distorted interpretations of Christ's death continue to exert a powerful influence. As Komonchak notes, these distortions may have inspired the "excesses" of Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. And they were perhaps acceptable to Richard Alleva, who wrote that the movie is a reminder that "the sacred roots of Christianity ... speak to desires ... that can only be satisfied by magnificence and extremity," and further that the movie is "soaked in blood" as "ritual tends to be" ("Torturous," March 12, 2004).

The theology of penal substitution also appeals to proponents of the death penalty. Yet while some people insist that death is the only punishment severe enough for certain offenders, they also claim that death is not that severe. Justice Antonin Scalia, perhaps our most influential amateur theologian, has argued that Christians rightly accept capital punishment because death is "no big deal." (Jesus would thus seem to have been mistaken in the value he attached to laying down one's life for one's friends.)

JULIAN J. IRIAS

Davis, Calif.