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?