Christian Perspectives on Suicide

by William E. Phipps

Suicide remains a taboo subject, even though there are about as many suicides in the nation
each year as there were American deaths in the entire Vietnam war. Of the 50,000 annual suicide
deaths, about half are not reported as such. Even though suicide occurs with frequency and in
virtually every community, I have never heard or read a sermon on the subject. No mention is
made of suicide in several books I possess that deal with Christian morality. James Clemons, in
his article "Suicide and Christian Moral Judgment," rightly indicts biblical scholars, Christian
ethicists and contemporary pastors for neglecting to think through suicide-related issues in a
responsible manner (The Christian Century. May 8, 1985).

The Bible tells of six self-killings. The best known is that of the betrayer Judas as recorded in
Matthew. A thousand years earlier, King Saul fell on his sword rather than become a captive of
the Philistines who had defeated his army. Another notable suicide is recorded in the Book of
Judges. Samson desired to take revenge on the Philistines who had tortured him, and so he
prayed: "Please God, give me back my strength just this one time more, so that I can get even
with the Philistines for making me blind." He then pushed against the pillars supporting the
temple of the god Dagon and shouted. "Let me die with the Philistines!" When the building fell,
Samson perished, along with many of his enemies. The biblical writers neither condemn nor
commend those whom they record as having taken their own lives. Perhaps the narrators
thought it was fitting for Samson, Saul and Judas to respond to their varied situations by
committing suicide. (The other three biblical suicides were minor Old Testament figures.)

In early Christianity, suicide was sometimes regarded as a virtuous act. Eusebius, in his account
of martyrs at Antioch (Ecclesiastical History, Book 8, chapter 12), tells of a mother who taught
her two beautiful unmarried daughters to regard rape as the most dreadful thing that could
happen to them. Eventually the mother and daughters were captured by a band of lustful
soldiers. On realizing their plight, they modestly requested to be excused for a minute. They then
threw themselves into a nearby river and drowned.

In the fourth century Bishop Augustine discussed suicide at length. Recognizing that certain
Christian women had committed suicide rather than permit their bodies to be ravaged, Augustine
granted that they may have done what was right in the sight of God, but in his view the women
should not have assumed that rape would necessarily have deprived them of their purity. Purity
is a state of mind, he affirmed, so bodily violence cannot damage it. Job kept his moral integrity
amid terrible suffering and did not take his life, Augustine noted. He found it significant that at no
point does the Bible make it lawful to take ones life. The command "Thou shalt not kill" implies,
he argued, that ones own life as well as the lives of others should be preserved. Samsons
suicide was a rare exception to this rule, for he received special divine permission. Concluded
Augustine: "He who knows it is unlawful to kill himself may nevertheless do so if he is ordered by
God" (City of God, Book I, Sections 18-26).

Augustines viewpoint on suicide has heavily influenced both Roman Catholics and Protestants.
Thomas Aquinas, the most outstanding of Catholic theologians, gave three succinct arguments
why suicide is a sin against self, neighbor and God. First, suicide is contrary to nature: every
living organism naturally desires to preserve its life. Second, it is contrary to our social
obligations: the whole human community is injured by self-killing. Third, suicide is contrary to our
religious rights: God alone should decide when a person will live or die. Aquinas reasoned: "To
bring death upon oneself in order to escape the other afflictions of this life is to adopt a greater
evil in order to avoid a lesser. . . . Suicide is the most fatal of sins because it cannot be repented
of" (Summa Theologica 2-2, q. 64,5). The poet Dante, following Aquinass theology, placed those
who take their own lives on the seventh level of hell, below the greedy and the murderous
(Inferno 13). For centuries those who committed the unconfessed and therefore unforgivable sin
of suicide were not buried in cemeteries that Catholic priests had consecrated.
The 17th-century Westminster Shorter Catechism, which remains authoritative for Calvinists,
follows Augustine in relating one of the Ten Commandments to suicide. The Catechism asserts:
"The sixth commandment forbiddeth the taking away of our own life, or the life of our neighbor
unjustly, or whatsoever tendeth thereunto."

Lutheran pastor and theologian Dietrich Bonhoeffer also showed his indebtedness to Augustine
when he wrote: "God has reserved to himself the right to determine the end of life, because he
alone knows the goal to which it is his will to lead it." When that leader of the German resistance
to Hitler was being persecuted -- prior to his imprisonment and execution -- he affirmed: "Even if
a persons earthly life has become a torment for him, he must commit it intact to Gods hand,
from which it came" (Ethics [Macmillan, 1955], pp. 124-5).

An examination of our biblical and church heritage discloses different degrees of tolerance
toward suicide. For some it is always absolutely wrong; for others it may be an appropriate
response in exceptional situations. The historical discussion provides some guidance for facing
current dilemmas. Modern medicine occasionally extends artificially the time of death -- a fact
that has generated fresh inquiry into situations in which suicide might be acceptable. Let us
consider three cases involving elderly persons.

After a 78-year-old man was admitted to a hospital, an examination revealed an erratic heart
beat, an enlarged prostate, a bowel obstruction and arthritic joints. When the patient learned
that surgery was being planned, he pleaded: "Listen, doctor, I dont want to die with tubes
sticking out all over me. I dont want my children to remember their father that way. Im old and
tired and have seen enough of life, believe me. But still I want to be a man, not a vegetable that
someone comes and waters every day. You see, the engine is broken down; it is time for the
engineer to abandon it." Despite this eloquent request, a tube for feeding was placed down the
old mans nose into his stomach. Intravenous injections were made four times a day. Later the
man was hooked up to a respirator to increase his oxygen intake. One night he reached over and
switched off his respirator. For several hours the hospital staff did not realize what had happened.
On the bedside table they found this suicide note: "Death is not the enemy, doctor. Inhumanity
is."

Another pathetic case concerns an 80-year-old blind widow who had lived for years in a nursing
home. Having endured uninterrupted pain from her cancer, she saved up morphine tablets to
swallow all at once in the hope of dying. She sank into a coma, but an attendant discovered the
suicide attempt. The womans consciousness revived after she was rushed to a hospital
emergency room and injected with an antimorphine drug. She was later returned to the nursing
home, where she had to suffer much longer. Had she the right to take the deadly dosage of the
drug and to die undisturbed after doing so?

The third case is the much-publicized one of Elizabeth and Henry Pitney Van Dusen. Dr. Van

Dusen, age 77, was the former president of New Yorks Union Theological Seminary and a
distinguished Presbyterian minister. He and his wife, Elizabeth, age 80, discussed suicide with
their friends and then signed a pact before taking an overdose of sleeping pills. She wrote:

We have both had very full and satisfying lives. . . . But since Pitney had his stroke five years ago,
we have not been able to do any of the things we want to do . . . and my arthritis is much worse.
There are also many helpless old people who without modern medicinal care would have died,
and we feel God would have allowed them to die when their time had come. Nowadays it is
difficult to die. We feel that this way we are taking will become more usual and acceptable as the
years pass. We are both increasingly weak and unwell, and who would want to die in a nursing
home? . . . "O Lamb of God that takest away the sins of the world, grant us thy peace."
The Van Dusens realized that some nursing homes are virtual tombs where the elderly are buried
alive. They asked for Gods forgiveness in advance for any wrong they might be committing by
their decision to leave this life before they needlessly suffered even more. Although they did not
say so, they were probably also disturbed by the thought of the loneliness that would follow if
one survived the other.

In 1980, the New York-based organization Concern for Dying convened a group of psychiatrists,
philosophers and theologians who prepared a statement on suicide for the terminally ill which is
relevant to the cases I have cited:

Historically, suicide has been judged as "sinful" by organized religion. . . . We do not dispute the
contention that the majority of suicides represent a rejection of the "gift of life" and, as such, are
evidence of severe emotional distress. We believe, however, that a person with a progressive
terminal disease faces a unique situation -- one which calls for a new look at traditional
assumptions about the motivation for choosing suicide. In our view, this choice might be found to
be reasoned, appropriate, altruistic, sacrificial, and loving. We can imagine that an individual
faced with debilitating, irreversible illness, who would have to endure intractable pain, mutilating
surgery, or demeaning treatments -- with added concern for the burden being placed on family
and friends -- might conclude that suicide was a reasonable, even generous, resolution to a
process already moving inexorably toward death.

The Concern for Dying group that made this declaration also urges that suicide decisions of the
terminally ill not be made in secret. Consultation should be encouraged with family, friends
and/or trusted health-care professionals who have an intimate knowledge of the patient.
Impulsive acts could thereby be curtailed; on the other hand, assistance could be given in
implementing thoughtful decisions. Also, bungled suicide attempts which leave a person in a
worse state of health might be avoided.

At a 1981 Concern for Dying conference, Margaret Battin, who has written texts on ethical issues
in suicide, envisioned a time in the distant future when Christians would come to treat suicide as
a kind of sacrament involving a serious grappling with ultimate questions. She thinks that
because of their impact on the immediate family and the larger community, suicide decisions
should not be treated as exclusively private matters. Families who are uninvolved can suffer
debilitating guilt.

Although Battins hopes for a new sacrament may be unrealistic, most Christians and non-
Christians will probably agree that Aquinass condemnation of all suicides is too harsh. Certainly
there is no basis in biblical or patristic teachings for regarding suicide as the most deadly sin. As
we have seen, there is no explicit prohibition of suicide anywhere in the canonical texts of
Christianity. In his essay "On Suicide," philosopher David Hume comes closer than Augustine in
giving a correct contextual interpretation of a law of Moses. "Resignation to Providence is indeed
recommended in Scripture," he stated, "but that implies only submission to ills that are
unavoidable, not to such as may be remedied by prudence or courage. Thou shalt not kill is
evidently meant to exclude only the killing of others over whose life we have no authority."

Besides eschewing the traditional condemnatory stance toward all suicides, Christians need to be
correctly informed about people who contemplate, attempt or carry out suicide. It is frequently
asserted, for example, that suicide is the product of a diseased mind. The fact is that while
psychotics are higher suicide rises than the rest of the population, most of those who commit
suicide have no history of severe mental illness. Another half-truth is that suicide runs in families.
The fact is that there is no evidence that genetic inheritance predisposes some people to self-
destruction. It is also misleading to say that it is only depressed people who commit suicide. Not
all suicidal persons have suffered from depression, and those who are in a despondent mood
may lack the energy to fulfill their resolve. Many suicides occur after individuals come out of
depression and are presumed by their friends to have regained mental health. It is also
unsupported folk wisdom that suicide tends to be seasonal, with more suicides taking place
during bad weather or at Christmastime when some people are most lonely. Some people
distance themselves from those who talk about suicide, believing that there is no stopping those
who have decided on that course of action. Actually, most who seem intent on suicide are
ambivalent and never carry out their decision. Related to this is another half-truth: the suicide-
prone are so deeply disturbed that only a professional psychotherapist should deal with them.
Sensitive listening by laypersons has often reduced stress and preserved life.

Christians need to learn to be especially understanding of families that have sustained suicides.
It is appalling to a family when one of its members decides that he or she would rather be dead
than continue to share their company. Since no illness or accident is to blame for the killing, they
are consumed with guilt. A father of a son who committed suicide said: "Everyone has a skeleton
in the closet. But the person who kills himself leaves his skeleton in anothers closet." Family
members tend to think: if only they had avoided those quarrels, it would not have happened.
Sometimes they are so ashamed that they dread facing their acquaintances in the community.
Not only do they feel socially isolated, but they may also feel spiritually alienated. Such
alienation may be expressed in resentment toward God for allowing such an injustice to happen
to them. Or they may feel self-hatred for having contributed to the nurture of someone who, as
they see it, arrogantly took his or her life -- a prerogative of God alone: A survivors grief may be
so severe that it can become a cause of self-execution on the part of the bereaved.

Having reflected on the usual tragedy of suicide and its horrendous impact on survivors, we must
ask: Are there any situations in which it is morally right? Donnes position is a helpful guide for
facing the broad range of circumstances confronting the Christian. There may well be situations
in which suicide can be a conscientious act resulting from a careful weighing of alternatives. The
Van Dusenss suicide note, for example, displays serious and rational decision-making by
Christians. After the couple died, a committee of the Presbytery of New York City wisely
concluded that for some Christians, as a last resort in the gravest of situations, suicide may be
an act of their Christian conscience."