i) Is suicide ipso facto damnable? One argument for that contention is that if suicide is forgivable, then that implies postmortem forgiveness. To be forgiven, God must forgive him after the fact. After he died.
However, that inference only follows if you think God is a timebound agent who must wait until after a Christian commits suicide to forgive him. But if God knows the future, then God can forgive some sins before they were committed. Proleptic forgiveness.
ii) There's also the general issue of whether a born-again Christian can lose his salvation. If salvation is inamissable, then suicide isn't ipso facto damnable.
Another issue is that some forms of suicide are not instantaneous. Hanging, for example, is slow and painful. In the last moments before death, it is not inconceivable that a Christian would repent and be forgiven.
ReplyDeleteWhat about confessing before you commit suicide? So often you read about how sorry people are for what they are about to do in notes, etc. Who knows what they are saying to God, especially if they're a Christian moments before they act.
ReplyDeleteTrue, people who commit suicide often express regret about what they're about to do, but they feel that they're at the end of their rope, and they see that as the only way out. For them, in their situation or perception, it's an agonizing dilemma.
DeleteI think many people who commit suicide are deeply conflicted. They hate where they are in life, and they hate finding themselves in a position where they (think they) have to end it. They don't want to die. They don't want to kill themselves. But they don't want to go on living even more. So there's lots of regret, as they're torn by opposing impulses. They may feel remorse for the people they will hurt by killing themselves, but they find life unbearable. So there's a mix of pain, misgiving, compunction, and self-reproach.
DeleteI have no doubt that if someone before died repents (since suicide isn't imediate in some cases), and trust in Jesus will be pardoned.
ReplyDeleteBut, maybe because my Catholic background, and with Lutherans, I think that dying in sin maybe cannot be pardoned.
A guy in a forum onetime said that, since God is out of the time, one can pray for someone who commited suicide, since God can hear prayers in the future, in order that the person could repent before had died. I think that this thought maybe is a kind of heterodox, but makes sense.
i) It's true that a timeless God can respond to future prayers. So the notion of retroactive answers to prayer makes sense in some cases.
Deleteii) Since Christians are sinners, Christians die in sin.
iii) Of course, in Catholicism, there's the notion of receiving last rites just before death so that you will die in a state of grace. But that's bound up with the whole package of Catholic theology.
iv) Again, there's the notion that each sin requires separate repentance. But that's unrealistic. At most, what's required is a penitent heart. A contrite disposition.
v) A problem with saying that suicide is automatically damnatory is that, in some cases, it makes salvation or damnation a fluke of lucky or unlucky timing. Take a fatal traffic accident. If you were at the same intersection a minute sooner or later, you are still heavenbound, since you weren't killed–but because you were at the wrong place at the wrong time, you go to hell. Not time to repent! Or if you were at an intersection a block away, you are still heavenbound, since you just missed the fatal accident. That makes salvation or damnation quite arbitrary.