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Suicide as Sin
In calling up the harsh and even outrageous treatment that earlier Christian Europe accorded to suicides, Alvarez goes on to give what is a very surprising account of how ambiguous early Christianity was toward suicides. Like everyone, I imagine, I thought it was taken up in the commandment not to kill, but according to Alvarez, this did not become Christian doctrine until later in the Christian era.
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They also reflect the difficulty the Church had in rationalizing its ban on suicide, since neither the Old or the New Testament directly prohibits it. There are four suicides recorded in the Old Testament - Samson, Saul, Abimelech and Achitophel - and none of them earns adverse comment. In fact, they are scarcely commented on at all. In the New Testament, the suicide of even the greatest criminal, Judas Iscariot, is recorded as perfunctorily; instead of being added to his crimes, it seems a measure of his repentance. Only much later did the theologians reverse the implicit judgment of St. Matthew and suggest that Judas was more damned by his suicide than by his betrayal of Christ. In the first years of the Church, suicide was such a neutral subject that even the death of Jesus was regarded by Tertullian, one of the most fiery of the early Fathers, as a kind of suicide. He pointed out, and Origen agreed, that He voluntarily gave up the ghost, since it was unthinkable that the Godhead should be at the mercy of the flesh. Whence John Donne’s comment in Biathanatos, the first formal defense of suicide in English: “Our blessed Savior... chose that way for our redemption to sacrifice his life, and profuse his blood.”
The idea of suicide as a crime comes late in Christian doctrine, and as an afterthought. It was not until the sixth century that the Church finally legislated against it, and then the only Biblical authority was a special interpretation of the Sixth Commandment: “Thou shalt not kill.” The bishops were urged into action by St. Augustine; but he, as Rousseau remarked, took his arguments from Plato’s Phaedo, not from the Bible. Augustine’s arguments were sharpened by the suicide mania which was, above all, the distinguishing marks of the early Christians, but ultimately his reasons were impeccably moral. Christianity was founded on the belief that each human body is the vehicle of an immortal soul which will be judged not in this world but in the next. And because each soul is immortal, every life is equally valuable. Since life itself is the gift of God, to reject it is to reject Him and to frustrate His will; to kill His image is to kill Him - which means a one-way ticket to eternal damnation.
-- A. Alvarez, “The Savage God”
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This makes it clearer to me that suicide is an exceedingly difficult moral issue, at least for those of us trying to understand the suicide of others and suicide in general. Though, for the particular suicide, for the individual who has committed suicide, I suppose one has gone beyond debate and philosophy and that it is less a moral question than a raw existential question, and perhaps there is usually the sense that one has run out of options, whether this is in fact the case or is actually a desperate delusion.
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They also reflect the difficulty the Church had in rationalizing its ban on suicide, since neither the Old or the New Testament directly prohibits it. There are four suicides recorded in the Old Testament - Samson, Saul, Abimelech and Achitophel - and none of them earns adverse comment. In fact, they are scarcely commented on at all. In the New Testament, the suicide of even the greatest criminal, Judas Iscariot, is recorded as perfunctorily; instead of being added to his crimes, it seems a measure of his repentance. Only much later did the theologians reverse the implicit judgment of St. Matthew and suggest that Judas was more damned by his suicide than by his betrayal of Christ. In the first years of the Church, suicide was such a neutral subject that even the death of Jesus was regarded by Tertullian, one of the most fiery of the early Fathers, as a kind of suicide. He pointed out, and Origen agreed, that He voluntarily gave up the ghost, since it was unthinkable that the Godhead should be at the mercy of the flesh. Whence John Donne’s comment in Biathanatos, the first formal defense of suicide in English: “Our blessed Savior... chose that way for our redemption to sacrifice his life, and profuse his blood.”
The idea of suicide as a crime comes late in Christian doctrine, and as an afterthought. It was not until the sixth century that the Church finally legislated against it, and then the only Biblical authority was a special interpretation of the Sixth Commandment: “Thou shalt not kill.” The bishops were urged into action by St. Augustine; but he, as Rousseau remarked, took his arguments from Plato’s Phaedo, not from the Bible. Augustine’s arguments were sharpened by the suicide mania which was, above all, the distinguishing marks of the early Christians, but ultimately his reasons were impeccably moral. Christianity was founded on the belief that each human body is the vehicle of an immortal soul which will be judged not in this world but in the next. And because each soul is immortal, every life is equally valuable. Since life itself is the gift of God, to reject it is to reject Him and to frustrate His will; to kill His image is to kill Him - which means a one-way ticket to eternal damnation.
-- A. Alvarez, “The Savage God”
_ _ _
This makes it clearer to me that suicide is an exceedingly difficult moral issue, at least for those of us trying to understand the suicide of others and suicide in general. Though, for the particular suicide, for the individual who has committed suicide, I suppose one has gone beyond debate and philosophy and that it is less a moral question than a raw existential question, and perhaps there is usually the sense that one has run out of options, whether this is in fact the case or is actually a desperate delusion.