Tuesday, April 16, 2013

Perseverance and suicide

I’ve been asked how suicide relates to the perseverance of the saints. There are many potential permutations to that question, depending on how nuanced an answer we wish to give.

i) At one level, the doctrine of perseverance means a born-again Christian can’t lose his salvation. So unless we think suicide results in loss of salvation, there’s no prima facie tension between suicide and perseverance.

ii) Likewise, the doctrine of perseverance generally means a born-again Christian will die in the faith. Even if we think suicide is sinful, dying in sin and dying in the faith are mutually compatible. After all, every Christian is a sinner. Every Christian dies a sinner. In that sense, every Christian dies in a state of sin. Dying in a state of sin, and dying in a state of grace, are mutually compatible.

iii) It isn’t even strictly necessary that a Christian be a believer at the moment of death. There’s a sense in which senile Christians may no longer be believers. They lack the cognitive ability to exercise faith. But loss of faith, due to dementia, doesn’t entail loss of salvation. 

iv) On the other hand, regeneration entails sanctification. Fruits of grace. So how we live and how we die can reflect our inner spiritual condition. We need to avoid any antinomian version of eternal security.

v) Traditionally, Catholicism treated suicide as “self-murder.” A mortal sin. Basically an express ticket to hell. Suicides were denied Christian burial on hallowed ground (e.g. a church cemetery).

There’s a danger that the pendulum has swung to far in the other direction. Rick Warren quotes his son as saying: “Dad, I know I’m going to heaven. Why can’t I just die and end this pain?”

The doctrine of perseverance is not a license to take your life with impunity. Not a contingency plan. That’s very presumptuous.

Although suicide is not a guarantee of damnation, suicide is not a guarantee of salvation. It’s a fearful thing to take your own life.

vi) Is suicide always sinful? There may be hypothetical situations in which suicide is not a sin.

Suppose an army unit dispatches a scout to scope out the area. Suppose the scout finds himself surrounded by the enemy. He knows that if he’s captured, they will torture him to discover the location of his unit. Suppose he kills himself to protect his unit. That might be a case where suicide is morally justifiable.

Let’s take a similar, but somewhat different, and perhaps more controversial example. Suppose Christianity is illegal in a particular country. There’s an underground church movement. This consists of semi-autonomous cell-groups. By subdividing the underground church into cell-groups, that makes it easier to elude detection by the authorities. Moreover, if the authorities discover a cell-group, that won’t lead them to the whole church.

Suppose a Christian knows that the authorities are on to him. If they bring him in for interrogation, they will torture him to track down the other members of his cell-group. Suppose he kills himself to spare his fellow Christians. That might be a case where suicide is morally justifiable.

I’m not taking a firm position on that. Just considering potential counterexamples to the facile assumption that suicide is necessarily wrong.

Let’s take one more example. Suppose a family man is diagnosed with terminal cancer. Suppose he commits suicide so that his family will collect on the life insurance policy.

Now, I don’t that’s a justifiable reason to commit suicide. However, that’s morally ambiguous compared to someone who commits suicide as an act of revenge, to make the survivors feel guilty. So even where suicide is culpable, there can be degrees of culpability. It’s possible to do the wrong thing with the best of intentions. That’s different from doing the wrong thing with malicious intentions.

vii) Apropos (vi), we also need to make allowance for extenuating circumstances. Maybe the Christian in that situation was wrong to take his own life. It was a snap judgment. But the fact that his actions were in the best interests of others, the fact that he was acting under extreme duress, even if we conclude that his actions were ill-considered, mitigates his guilt.

Likewise, if someone commits suicide because he is mentally ill, we usually consider that to be an extenuating circumstances or even an exculpatory circumstance. He was in a state of diminished responsibility.

This assumes the suicide is mentally ill through no fault of his own. In some cases, there are individuals (e.g. Ted Kaczynski, Bobby Fischer) whose madness seems to be self-induced. They work themselves into that mental state. But that’s probably exceptional.

viii) What about cases where suicide is sinful? Does that seal your damnation?

Well, Christians do, in fact, commit sin. You don’t lose your salvation by sinning. Otherwise, every Christian would be an instant apostate.

ix) Some might say what’s different about suicide is that, unlike other sins, that’s the very last thing you do before you die. There’s no time for repentance.

(Actually, that depends on the method of suicide. In some cases you might regret your rash act, but it’s too late to recover.)

This is especially significant in Catholic theology. Did you die in a state of mortal sin? Did you have time to confess and receive absolution?

However, that makes salvation contingent on lucky or unlucky timing. What if I commit a sin, and a minute later I die in a traffic accident? Am I doomed by the clock?

15 comments:

  1. WOW! Great post!

    When I originally read that quote of Rick Warren's son I wished someone in the Christian world would write a balanced and succinct article that would cover the various permutations of this issue and how to address them. That way I (and anyone else) could recommend it whenever the topic of suicide comes up. This is definitely that article!

    An article/blog like this is absolutely NEEDED to prevent people from taking Rick Warren's son's statement and using it to justify attempted suicide. I mean, demons will use that quote to tempt people to commit suicide.

    I suspect other Christian bloggers have addressed this issue sufficiently as well, but I bet few (if any) have done it like this blog. That is, being able to touch all the major bases which usually aren't addressed or even thought of/considered.

    I definitely believe that some suicides end up in heaven. Though, I suspect it's a much lower percentage than most Christians think. Suicide is murder, even if it's self-murder; and Scripture says the following about murderers.

    "...and you know that no murderer has eternal life abiding in him." - 1 John 3:15

    I take it from this passage that, generally speaking, murderers cannot be regenerate. However, all the qualifications I would want to make have been made by Steve in this post.

    Thanks for the blog Steve. I hope many other Christians reading this blog of yours will share its link with as many people as possible (whenever it's appropriate). It deserves wide distribution.

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  2. Suppose Christianity is illegal in a particular country. There’s an underground church movement. This consists of semi-autonomous cell-groups.

    Sadly, this is already the case in many countries (as we all know). I hope this doesn't happen to the church in North America. But with all the things going on socially, politically, legally, and economically, it might well happen.

    In an email by Hugh Ross he wrote:

    QUOTE:
    I’ve just finished reading a sobering and challenging book by pastor and journalist John S. Dickerson. This book, The Great Evangelical Recession, sounds a jarring alarm. If we ignore it, the church in North America is, in Dickerson’s words, heading for a crash.

    Because so few Christians are leading other adults to faith in Christ, our numbers are declining. Even the mega-churches’ growth comes primarily from transfers rather than from adding new believers.

    The painful truth must be faced: disciple-making is not keeping pace with population growth in North America, and it doesn’t take a math genius to grasp what the numbers mean for our future.
    END QUOTE [bold text original]

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  3. Steve, I always appreciate the combination of clear thinking and compassion you bring to these types of things. You may be an intellectual superhero, but you're always a Christian intellectual superhero first!

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  4. For the past year and 5 months (or so) Wayne Grudem has been teaching on Christian Ethics and he's been slowly going through the 10 Commandments. It so happens that he's been dealing with the 6th Commandment (Thou Shalt Not Murder) since 12/2/12. So far there have been 13 lessons on the 6th Commandment. It so happens that he had to speak on the topic of suicide 2 days after the tragic suicide of Rick Warren's son. I recommend people listen to the lesson because of the testimonies and advice of the Christian audience who have been affected by suicide in their families. One even shares how he contemplated suicide in the past and how he got help.

    One can access the lesson HERE

    The the entire ongoing series can be accessed at this link: http://www.christianessentialssbc.com/messages/

    Just click on the Christian Ethics book picture.

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  5. Hello Steve,

    A question, if I may - in this post, you speak of the diminishing of responsibility with regard to mental illness:

    "Likewise, if someone commits suicide because he is mentally ill, we usually consider that to be an extenuating circumstances or even an exculpatory circumstance. He was in a state of diminished responsibility."

    You seem to speak as if some acts done in a state of mental illness are exculpatory, but in a previous (like, really previous) post, you criticize the idea:

    "If you’re so evil that you can’t tell the difference between good and evil, then you can cop a plea to insanity and get off the hook.

    Not to mention the all-purpose, temporary insanity defense. The Twinkies made me do it!"

    http://triablogue.blogspot.com/2008/04/adversus-reppertus.html

    I realize the original post was in the context of Arminianism, but are there contexts where you think severe mental illness really does diminish responsibility?

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  6. We need to distinguish between genuine mental illness and the "insanity defense," especially "temporary insanity."

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  7. Thanks for your response, Steve.

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  8. “Although suicide is not a guarantee of damnation, suicide is not a guarantee of salvation. It’s a fearful thing to take your own life.”

    If you know you are a believer, why isn’t suicide a guarantee of salvation?

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    1. You missed what I said about presumption.

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  9. I assume you’re referring to the line, “The doctrine of perseverance is not a license to take your life with impunity. Not a contingency plan. That’s very presumptuous.”

    I’m not suggesting a believer should presume that he has license to commit suicide. But my question remains, If you know you are a believer, why isn’t suicide a guarantee of salvation?

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    1. I'll be trying to be faithful to Calvinist theology, though I welcome correction.

      1. While it's possible to attain the Holy Spirit given "infallible assurance of faith" that the WCF talks about, that infallible assurance is not of the essence of faith. In other words, you can be genuinely saved even if you don't possess it or even have doubts about your salvation.

      2. Having said that, it's possible to be deceived about one's salvation [i.e. gracious status] because of sinful self-deception through an incorrect application of right theology, or consistent application of wrong theology to oneself.

      3. The Bible clearly teaches that while on earth, Christians will never reach a state of perfected sanctification such that they will continue to live lives tainted with sin to some degree or another [cf. Rom. 7; Jam. 3:2; 1 John 1:8-10; John 13:9-10; Luke 11:3-4 etc.].

      4. While it's true that every sin (no matter how small) is deserving of hell, it is NOT the case that all sins are therefore equally heineous. Some sins *are* worse than others.

      5. Apart from intentional and persistent apostasy that lasts till death, there is no sin (no matter how great) that God cannot forgive upon repentance and faith in Jesus Christ.

      6. Because of #3, every Christian will die with some sin in their life (be it ever so small).

      7. Because Christians have the Holy Spirit working in their lives, there will be a tendancy for them to shun more readily the greater (i.e. worse) sins because of the convicting and sanctifying work of the Holy Spirit.

      8. While not all self-killing is self-murder, intentional and premeditated suicide is self-murder. Since murder is a very serious sin and generally a sign of non-regeneration [1 John 3:15], the likelihood of anyone being genuinely regenerate and saved who commits suicide will be lower than someone who died with lesser sins (say occasional gluttony). Such a person may have been self-deceived into thinking he or she was genuinely saved [per #2 above].

      Again, I am NOT saying that all suicides go to hell. I will not give percentages because that can give false hope and encourage some to contemplate as an option, or even attempt suicide. In cases where someone has successfully committed suicide, we should leave it in the hands of a sovereign, just, and YES merciful God who will never judge unjustly.

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    2. heineous = heinous
      tendancy = tendency

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    3. Spiritual presumption and the assurance of salvation are in tension.

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