The Briefing with Albert Mohler - Monday, October 12, 2026

Episode Date: October 12, 2026

This is The Briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview.Part I (00:13 – 14:36)With the Acropolis In Sight, Rubio Champions Western Civilization in Historic SpeechSecretary Rubio Remarks from the Acropolis in Athens by U.S. Department of State (U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio)Part II (14:36 – 20:23)There Is No Legitimate Global Court: US Sanctions International Criminal CourtA Nobel Prize for Hating Israel by The Wall Street Journal (The Editorial Board)Part III (20:23 – 36:56)Execution of Nidal Hasan, Ft. Hood Shooter, Raises Controversy About How Capital Punishments Should Be Carried Out: Would a Public Execution Serve America or Its Enemies?Sign up to receive The Briefing in your inbox every weekday morning.Follow Dr. Mohler:X | Instagram | Facebook | YouTubeFor more information on The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to sbts.edu.For more information on Boyce College, just go to BoyceCollege.com.To write Dr. Mohler or submit a question for The Mailbox, go here.

It's Monday, October 12, 2006. I'm Albert Mueller, and this is the briefing, a daily analysis of news and events from a Christian worldview. Last week, with the Acropolis behind him, the Parthenon up above gleaming in the sun, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered an historic address, and in worldview terms, it was truly important. It's one of those addresses given by a major U.S. figure, in this case, the U.S. Secretary of State, that really does serve as a hallmark. It's one of those moments, a touchstone in which we can say, that desperately needed to be said, and it was. The U.S. Secretary of State was standing there in Athens, and of course, he was invoking the entire history and tradition of classical Greece. He was pointing beyond Greece to Rome

and beyond Rome to the inheritance of Western civilization, what would become Christendom in Europe, and eventually would lead to a civilizational reach that would, of course, include the United States of America. Western civilization. the very heart of which was there in the Mediterranean and then further north in Europe and then crossing the Atlantic, especially in the Anglo-Saxon tradition, you have a Western civilization that is a thing. It's referred to rightly as the West. When we speak of the West and we contrast that with the East, we're talking about two different empires, two different histories, two different worldviews. Of course, we're currently sharing a world. But the point is, when we talk about

Western civilization, we're talking about something and as the U.S. Secretary of State was determined to insist. It is something that demands preservation. It is something worth preserving. It is a civilizational inheritance. We will either pass on to our children and grandchildren, or we will not. With the Acropolis behind him, he said for thousands of years, the civilization that built what stands behind me has captivated the imagination of the Western world. Generations of our states, when artists and philosophers have looked to it, they've looked to it with wonder, and they've looked to it with awe. He continues, and I'm, of course, cutting a lot out here. he said the Parthon on his suit, he says, for 25 centuries, quote, empires have risen and fallen beneath

its shadows, and the progeny of the men who built it, the sons of Athens and Rome, have carried their civilization with them to the ends of the earth. Two and a half centuries after the founding of the American Republic halfway across the world from where I stand now, the Secretary of State said, quote, I stand here today as Secretary of State of that Republic, and a great grandson of settlers who arrived in the new world from Spain. I stand here to testify to a debt that no lapse of time, no distance of space can ever extinguish. Now, let me be clear. The Secretary of State, Secretary Rubio knew exactly what he was doing. He was drawing a line in the sand. He was making a very clear argument. Now, he was making that argument from a rare position in which the Acropolis and

the Parthenon were visible right behind him. He's talking about tangible evidence, irrefutable evidence of that tradition. And furthermore, as a learned man, he's able to connect the dots in terms of how that tradition comes down to us in the inheritance of Western civilization. He spoke of Athens, saying, quote, here we found the first realization of all the essential traits who had come to define the West, fierce individuality and relentless ambition, daring exploration and invention, a yearning for discovery for adventure, risk, and glory, an insatiable curiosity about the world and the principles by which it operates, a hunger to know the mysteries of nature and grasp the secrets of the cosmos,

and impatience with the notion of impossibility, chafing it all about, boundaries and limits, straining to peer into the depths of the unknown. But with great substance, he went further. Listen to this. He spoke of the West. He spoke of Athens in particular, quote, this was the foundation of the Western mind. Our math, our science, our medicine. Now listen to this. Quote, our philosophy, ethics, and religion, it paved the way for the gospel of Jesus Christ to find fertile soil in Europe and flourish in the age in the empire of Christenum. It was the foundation of the riches of Christian theology, of Augustine and Aquinas, and the whole tradition of natural law, end quote. You just take that one paragraph. I just want to reflect upon it with you for a

moment. That is an astounding paragraph. He ties together Western civilization. He acknowledges its roots in Athens and in Rome. And to that, we need to add Jerusalem. We need to add the Hebrew contribution. So it is ancient Jerusalem, ancient Athens, ancient Rome, providing that tradition. trajectory. But in particular, when you speak of the West, you're speaking of Athens and Rome, and then you have the Secretary of State going on to make very clear that this realizes itself in the full strength of Western civilization in Christianity, in Christendom. He goes ahead and uses that term. It flourished in the empire of Christendom. And then he says it was the foundation of the riches of Christian theology, a U.S. Secretary of State. Dares to talk about

Christian theology is the queen of the sciences, which is what it was, exactly what it was, in the medieval university. And then he said, Augustine and Aquinas and the whole tradition of natural law. Now, that may sound just interesting to a lot of listeners, but let me just tell you, when you have a U.S. Secretary of State, put words together like this, and when he ends it with the whole tradition of natural law incites Augustine and Aquinas, this is one of the most substantial affirmations of the history of the Christian worldview as central to the entire thought structure of Europe and Western civilization, continuing, of course, in North America, and it is an absolutely astoundingly true statement. It's remarkable, not remarkable because it's so

often made. It's remarkable because it is so rare to hear this kind of very clear conviction. Now, what would be distinctive about Western civilization? Speaking of this inheritance, he says, quote, it gave birth to a civilization marked not just by a common culture, it was marked by a common anthropology, a common view of man in his place in the universe. Its descendants would share not just the idea of a natural order, but a distinctive understanding of virtue, of destiny and fate, of truth, goodness, and beauty, of a code that dictates how men ought to live of objective standards and ideals to strive towards, end quote. Again, just astoundingly clear. And if there ever were words that were desperately needed in this moment. These are exactly the kind of words that we need to hear.

He knows the Parthenon is visible right behind him. He speaks of those who built the Parthenon. He said they've built upwards. He says, too much of the West has forgotten this quality. He says that over time in the West, too many have come to feel ashamed of the very things that make us and made us exceptional. He says, quote, we felt embarrassed that our achievement set us apart from the rest of the world. You know, this is exactly what's been going on. Now, I want to be a little more specific than the U.S. Secretary of State was in this very important historical address. I want to go further and say that the very idea of Western civilization, the very idea of the West, has been under sustained ideological attack now for a matter of centuries.

Most importantly, let's just say about 250 years, but most intensely we're talking about the 20th century and beyond. Let me tell you a couple of ways this comes up. One of the things you will hear from some people with a lot of influence in the liberal academy, in the modern university, one of the things they will say is, you know, if you're talking about Western civilization, you talk about the West, you talk about this is a singular unified civilization, that's too much of a generalization. And furthermore, it's a very recent idea. And so one of the things you will hear from the anti-imperialists in the modern academy is they will say this really didn't even become a descriptor or a way of talking about the West until the age of empire.

But that's simply not true. I mean, it's so profoundly. and ridiculously untrue, you would think no one would seriously make that argument, but they make it. They make it on prestige radio and television and streaming news and all the rest on the Sunday morning talk shows. They make it and they make it in the classroom, most importantly, and they get away with it. Let's just remind ourselves that a term like Christendom is even clearer, and that was a term that was used at the time. We're talking about many centuries, going well back into antiquity and certainly throughout the medieval age. we're talking about self-conscious references to Christian civilization, and then later to the Judeo-Christian heritage. And then, of course, with more substantial understandings, you look at the history, as I mention often,

even in terms of our laws and our court system and our legislation and all the rest, even in terms of art and high culture, you'll notice it's all infused with Christianity, with references to Christendom with Christian kings and Christian armies and Christian knights and Christian queens, Christian institutions, Christian universities, because of course, at least in the beginning, they couldn't imagine any other kind. Speaking of the contemporary moment, the Secretary of State said, quote, and now today we find ourselves at a crossroads, because the next decade and the decisions we make will write the story of the next century. The course we take will determine whether the West maintains its

place at the head of the world or resigns itself to a future of atrophy and servitude and decline. We will either choose to act now or lose the choice to act at all. This morning, released a major essay on this at World Opinions entitled Secretary Rubio in the crisis of our age. And one of the things I try to point out here is that the Secretary of State used some particular terms to make very clear what he's talking about. So for example, he spoke about the West being at an inflection point. That's very important. In other words, we're making decisions now. We're going to go one way or the other. In an address he gave earlier this year at the Munich Security Conference, Secretary Rubio said some very similar things.

There he used two different categories. He said the West was in danger of what he called managed decline and civilizational erasure. Now, I just want to say neither one of those is an exaggeration. Both of them are clear and present dangers. There are those, including many of the leaders of Europe, who want to manage decline. That's what they see their job as consisting of, just managing civilizational decline. Furthermore, they're quite willing, indeed, maybe even eager to see civilized. erasure. They're embarrassed about all of this. They're embarrassed about the pretensions, the

claims to truth. They're embarrassed about the Christianity and the biblical content. They're embarrassed that that's a history. They want to be rid of that in order to basically enter some brave new secular age. But of course, we understand there is no such thing. And the only way to get there is to bring this civilization as it now stands and as it has stood for centuries to an end. Now here's where Americans very clearly have understood for a long time, the United States of America, to be the product of and in some ways the fulfillment of Western civilization. And you could just see the period between, say, the Second World War in the end of the 20th century where the United States came into its own as a world power

and in so many ways came to lead Western civilization. But now you see, especially on our elite college campuses and in Hollywood, and for that matter, now with the DSA and the Democratic Party, you see much of America is growing increasingly hostile to the idea that this is a civilization that needs to be continuing. based upon truth claims that need to be honored and respected. Instead, they want to see very different truth claims. They want to see a very different civilization. They're open about that. They're increasingly candid about that. And for that reason, we need to be especially thankful for a U.S. Secretary of State, who in front of the Acropolis says, this is our tradition. We will own it. We will preserve it. We will clarify it. Or we will lose it. Speaking of the United States and other Western nations, the Secretary of State said, quote, so we must rebuild our instance. institutions and our alliances to face these threats together. He mentioned specifically, I won't take the time here, what many of those threats are. You know them already. Quote, understanding that the

purpose of these things is not to abolish the sovereignty of the nations that constitute them, it is to defend them and that nations need not abandon their distinct identities in order to recognize their common interests. And quote, that's an astoundingly important statement. And by the way, right now it's being played out most acutely perhaps in Europe. And that's probably why the Secretary of State of the United States chose this occasion, this location, this time in order to make this very important argument. Bringing his speech to a conclusion, the Secretary of State with the Acropolis behind him said, the history of Greece shows us an image of ourselves. It shows us that ours is the inheritance of great heroes, and that we should be proud, that we should

be intensely proud of where we come from. We should marvel at what our forefathers carved out of this countryside. The story of our civilization is the greatest story ever known to man, and it began here with the first men and women of the West. From them, he said, from them, we can rediscover the virtues, the courage, and the strength to confront the dangers that we face in our time. End quote. Again, the Secretary of State of the United States of America, Marco Rubio, has now delivered not just one, but two major addresses.

This one, far more theatrical with the Acropolis behind him, gleaming in the sun. He was speaking not only of the glory that was Rome, not only the glory that was Athens and Greece, He is speaking of the glory of Western civilization. And as Christians, we understand, Western civilization is marked by human sin. Western civilization is not only not perfect, it is profoundly imperfect, but it is a remarkable civilizational achievement. What I hope, for instance, for my fellow citizens, most importantly, what I hope for my children and grandchildren, is to inherit a world that still values what Western civilization

values, and is willing to defend them, to cherish them, to articulate them, to pass them down from generation to generation, the singularity of Western civilization and all that we know of human history in terms of preserving these values and convictions so greatly influenced by biblical Christianity, this is something we have to speak out loud, as something we have to preserve, something we have to respect, something we have to maintain, and hopefully, again, pass down to our children. But in order to do that, our leaders can't sell it out and just give up from above. I'll tell you one final thought about Secretary Rubio there in Athens. It's not just that this was a very rare address. It's so remarkable. It's worthy of our attention. And as I said, I don't know of a U.S. Secretary of State or anyone with that kind of authority who's spoken so clearly to these issues in recent decades. But it is also a reminder of the fact that just looking, say, a few years ahead, someone else is going to be Secretary of State of the United States. And you have to wonder if that message, if things go awry, will not. be just not Secretary Rubio's message, but exactly the opposite. That's the great danger we face.

All right, I mentioned there was a second issue, and this comes over the weekend. The news came last week that the Nobel Peace Prize has been awarded to Navanitham Pile. And we're talking about a jurist of the International Criminal Court, at least a former jurist of the International Criminal Court. She was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for what the Nobel Committee said was her fight for human justice and her opposition to genocide and many other things. Now, I want you to hold that on one side as a thought. And then on the other side, I want you to understand that Secretary of State Marco Rubio put out a statement just about the same time, just shortly thereafter, that the United States is imposing sanctions on the international criminal court. This is not an accident. It's also not out of

the blue. This is not out of nowhere. The Trump administration is not the first U.S. presidential administration have very grave concerns about the international criminal court. And so you just need to understand that when this is put together and when it was established a matter of decades ago, the United States was never a signatory to the treaty. The United States never joined in this effort. The United States has never been willing to have the U.S., for example, brought under criminal charges by the International Criminal Court. Now, as you look at this, let's just look at the Secretary of State's statement.

He said, quote, President Trump will never allow the international criminal court to prosecute Americans. This is why today the United States is sanctioning the International Criminal Court. We will ban transactions with this rogue court, cutting off their resources and crippling its ability to operate. Now, you would think at this point that, say, most Democrats would be opposed to this. But they're really not, or at least they haven't been, because even Democratic presidents have taken virtually the very same position. Now, just for a moment, just think about the fact that Republicans and Democrats, Republican presidents and Democratic presidents disagree on all kinds of things. and that comes down to foreign policy and legal issues. So if they have consistently opposed this court together,

and if they have all, regardless of party, refused to allow the U.S. to become a signatory to this treaty, or they have allowed to acknowledge the sovereignty and authority of this court, that really tells you something. And as a matter of fact, even the press looking at this, has gone back to the fact that during the time he was in office and the four years he was in office, President Joe Biden, remember it was President Trump, 2016 election,

it was President Biden elected in 2020. It was President Biden, who also called the ICC outrageous, and that's his very word for it. And that was when the ICC had issued an arrest warrant for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Of course, that leads to the big issue. The big issue here for the American administration is not so much the threat of criminal sanctions, investigations against the United States. The U.S. is never going to put up with that. But it's rather the posturing that has been coming from South America, in particular in its influence on the international criminal court in order to have Israel defined as a rogue nation guilty of genocide. And that's exactly what the court was trying to do. Even President Joe Biden, a liberal Democrat, he wasn't going to put up with that. The United States can't put up with this. This is a rogue court. That's exactly what it is. And you know, here's another point

from a Christian worldview perspective. When you hear about an international body, such as an international criminal court. I think the first moral impulse is to say, well, that sounds like a good idea. I mean, there's so much wrongdoing around the world, it'd be great to have some kind of international court. The problem is, who gets to define that international court? How does it derive its authority? By what rules does it operate? And where does its reach extend? And the fact is, there are huge problems with this. Number one, it just points to the impossibility of an international of a global government. It simply can't work. And I don't mean it can't work. just as a matter of some kind of theoretical principle, it can't work just as any kind of pragmatic

project. And so what it is at presence is a bunch of nations largely opposed to the United States and some other nations, most importantly Israel, and it's about this business. The Nobel Peace Prize Committee and the Peace Prize this year given to Navapela, let me just tell you, that's just another illustration of how political all this has become. And as a matter of fact, the editors of the Wall Street Journal called it out directly in an editorial published over the weekend. They headlined a Nobel Prize for Hating Israel. And the subhead of the article, the last thing the award to Navi Pile will do is promote the cause of peace. They went on to say, quote, it's possible that the Nobel Committee will someday bestow its peace prize on a less worthy recipient than Navi Pile, but we doubt it.

The Oslo worthies this year have honored an 85-year-old South African whose career has been marked above all by hatred for Israel and the Jews who support it, end quote. I think in terms of journalism, that paragraph has an astounding clarity, and I'm just going to leave it where it was. Where it ends, her career has been marked above all by hatred for Israel and the Jews who support it. That's all you really need to hear to see the problem. Going back to Secretary of State Marco Rubio, he has given indications he wants to dismantle, that's a word attributed to him, to dismantle this international criminal court. And let me just state again, just at first, it seems to make some kind of sense that there would be some kind of international criminal.

court. The problem is when you come up with who the authority would be, by what law it would make its adjudications, how it would enforce its sanctions, and all the rest. You cannot have a world court without eventually having a world government. Just keep that in mind. You can't have a meaningful world court without global law and a global government behind it. When it comes to that, the United States of America, I think, will not be the only nation that says, no way. Okay, there's so many things we want to talk about this week. We'll be looking at the developments in France, the extreme left, really showing its agenda here. And by the way, threatening even the continued functioning of the current French constitution and its constitutional order. We are also

going to be looking at several other things that are taking place, new controversies about surrogate parenting, surrogate motherhood in particular. And of course, there are huge death penalty issues out there. Krista Pike, the story continues to develop. We're going to have. to deal with many issues as that story unfolds. But the headline news over the weekend has to do with the impending execution of Captain Nadal Malik Hassan, who of course was the man who was found guilty of a mass killing there in Texas on a U.S. government facility, killing 13 and injuring so many others. And by the way, the death toll was not just 13 military personnel with 32 others wounded, 13 debt. It is also an unborn child who died in

this murderous attack. It was carried out by Hassan in what he declared himself was an intention as a suicide attack. He did not intend to live, but he did. And of course, now he's facing not only the death penalty, but he's facing the death penalty by firing squad. And so the announcement really came from Secretary of War Pete Hegsseth, Secretary of Defense, as formerly known, now identified as Secretary of War Pete Hegsafe. He made the statement that Hassan would be executed some time, within a defined period of time, somewhere close it is believed to the end of the year, that he will be executed by firing squad, which is within the authority of the U.S. military, and that there will be live streaming of the event.

Okay, so the big controversy has to do with not only the death penalty in this man, and I am a big believer in the death penalty, and I've often just taken it all the way back to the biblical logic, going back to Genesis chapter 9, the Imago Dei. and the very fact that the biblical logic is that if you slay an image bearer, then as an image bearer, you must die. And so by that, it means intentional homicide. It's not manslaughter, it's not accident. This is for intentional homicide. And in this case, we're talking about a man who basically didn't even ever say he didn't do it.

He's basically acknowledged killing 13 people and an unborn child and then injuring so many others, 13 members of the U.S. military slain by this one man. And it wasn't Islamic attack. He made that very, very clear. And he intended to die as a martyr. Okay, so here's the thing. The other two issues that are so controversial, and we'll just have to take them in rather summary form today, have to do with death by firing squad. And again, that is over history, especially in the 19th and in the 20th century, in the context of war, and this is a secretary of war making this announcement. It is a very military answer to a military set of murder, not only that, but a military. mass murder. And so there's an understandable dimension to that. And speaking of a firing squad, it can also be rather efficient. So I'm going to argue that a firing squad in this kind of situation

is not what's most controversial. What's most controversial is streaming the execution life. And here's where I'm going to say, I don't think that's a good idea. And I'm going to say that right now, and I know some people will feel otherwise, but I just want to tell you this. It is in the best interest of the United States to do what is in the best interest of justice. in the best interest of the United States. And then you think about giving our enemies, and especially our enemies in that part of the world. You think about giving our enemies the ammunition

of seeing a man who intended to be a martyr in the name of Islamic terrorism, made, by their definition, a martyr for Islamic terrorism in terms of something that's live-streamed and will be just repeated over and over and over again endlessly. I just want to say, I do not believe that such a thing is in the best interest of the United States. of America, of our peace and order and righteousness and our national security. The issue in this

is not so much what's fair or unfair for a mass murderer. Frankly, at this point, that's not really the issue. The question is what is and is not in the right interest, the best interest of the United States of America and the cause of justice. The other thing, just to keep in mind here, and I'm not going to say everyone, everyone who might observe this on streaming video falls into this category, but I can tell you that in Great Britain, well over a century and a half ago, they brought public executions to an end, not because of their concern about the people who needed not to see it, but because about their concern are the people who seem to be drawn to it. And the same thing has happened elsewhere in the world. That's one of the reasons why

among the last nations practicing public executions, it's basically rogue nations who want that kind of reputation. I don't think the United States of America committed to a constitutional rule of law and what's rightly defined as law and order and in our own best interest would follow the same path. It's not so much because it would have something to do with the rights of a mass murderer. It has to do with the national security and best interests of the United States of America in the world. There are moral issues to this. I don't think they're simplistic. But the bottom line is there is a reason why public executions have been drawn to a close. There's a reason why, given the current context of how that would be used throughout, let's just say,

the terrorist world, there's a reason why I don't think it's in the best interest of the United States of America, either not to apply justice. No, that is what government is called to do. But to do so in a way that serves our enemies, I think that's a step too far. President Trump says he's going to bring the entire issue into consideration, and I just hope that the issues I've raised are at least a part of that consideration. Vice President Vance said if it is a streamed execution, he will not be watching. I think I'll just tell you right now for all kinds of reasons, but not because I don't support the death penalty. For all kinds of reasons, I with the vice president will not.

Thanks for listening to the briefing. For more information, go to my website at Albertmoler.com. You can follow me on X or Twitter, but going to X.com forward slash Albert Moller. For information on the Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, go to SBTS. edu. For information on voice college, just go to voicecollege.com. I'll meet you again tomorrow for the briefing.