Why is taking your own life considered a sin? How a Christian Saint defined suicide

Among his myriad contributions, there is one that stands out with a particular resonance in our understanding of life and death: the idea of suicide as a sin.

Moral debate on suicide had, obviously, long predated Augustine – and it is an inescapable part of Christianity; Judas hanged himself, after all, following his betrayal of Christ – but it was this fourth-century thinker who altered the moral landscape, both religious and secular alike, when it came to taking one’s own life.

Who was Saint Augustine?

Augustine was born AD 354 to a Christian mother and pagan father in the Roman province of Numidia in North Africa. In his youth, he received a good education and quickly showed a towering intellect and interest in philosophy.

In his 30s, after spells teaching in Carthage and Milan (the centre of the Western Roman Empire), during which he explored a number of religions and philosophies, he converted to Christianity. He became the bishop of Hippo in 395/396 AD and stayed in the role until his death in AD 430.

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During that time, Augustine built a reputation as a passionate giver of sermons and a gifted theologian and writer, defending his interpretations of Christianity against others seen in North Africa, especially the Donatists (more below).

It was through his surviving works that Augustine’s legacy stretched well beyond his life. He was canonised as a saint, recognised as a ‘doctor of the church’ (an honorific title in Catholicism) and regarded as one of the Church Fathers.

Early Christian voices like Augustine were not only spiritual leaders, but thinkers that helped the religion to grow. They provided the intellectual and moral framework that guided the Church on important societal issues including suicide.

Beyond his profound impact on questions of morality and doctrine, to the Western Church of the medieval period Augustine was both founding figure and champion of reform at the same time. During the Protestant Reformation, he would be a cornerstone of the principles espoused by the likes of Martin Luther.

What was the view on suicide before Saint Augustine?

Before Christianity – and long before Augustine – suicide has been regarded in numerous ways in different cultures, and not always negatively. It could be a noble act of honour to avoid shame (perhaps most associated with seppuku in Japan) or as a pragmatic solution to suffering.

In Christianity, suicide appeared in various stories as well as the death of Judas. For instance, Samson, the supernaturally strong Israelite warrior, died by toppling the columns of the Philistine temple and burying his enemies and himself under the stones.

Before the fourth century, though, there was no clear answer on the moral status of suicide. When considered, it often evaded outright condemnation. But the Christian view seen today would begin to show itself in the decades before Augustine.

In AD 348, for example, the Council of Carthage forbade the veneration of “those who throw themselves down”.

“Saints” and “sinners”

In the last years of the Roman emperor Diocletian (reigned 284–305 AD), Christians suffered an intense and extremely bloody period of persecution. As part of the stripping of their rights and freedom of worship, they were ordered to turn over scriptures and holy objects to be destroyed.

While many Christian priests refused and were subject to torture and death, some complied with Roman authorities. In the aftermath, these were branded as ‘traditors’.

Debates raged on whether to show forgiveness to traditors or to demand acts of penance from them. A sect in North Africa, called Donatism, strongly favoured the latter. Taking their name from an early leader, Donatus, they declared that the clergy must be absolutely faultless for their ministry to mean anything.

The clergy had to be “saints”, but the traditors were “sinners”. So when a new bishop of Carthage was chosen by a suspected traditor, the Donatists split from the church. This made them a lot of powerful enemies, including the papacy and Constantine, the first Roman emperor to convert to Christianity.

Moreover, Donatists believed martyrdom to be a supreme virtue, and they pursued it with near-militant zeal. To them, the loss of one’s life was the ultimate act of faith.

This made it extremely difficult for the Roman authorities to quash Donatism. Even when condemned as heretics at the Council of Arles in AD 314, the sect continued to flourish. Eventually, Constantine gave up trying to suppress the Donatists and instead “left in the hands of God”.

Actually, it would be in the hands of Augustine.

Saint Augustine versus the Donatists

Following his consecration as bishop of Hippo in the late fourth century, Augustine spent the next decade attempting to do what Roman emperors could not: bring down the Donatists.

Through his sermons, letters and treatises, he articulated Christian doctrine in more depth than had ever been done before, which he then used to attack every aspect of Donatist ideology. So while Donatism insisted that the sacraments of a “sinner” priest were invalid, Augustine established the belief that sacraments did not depend on the individual priests.

Especially, he challenged Donatists on how they sought martyrdom. By emphasising that true martyrdom must come from external persecution, not self-destruction, Augustine provided a resolute denunciation of suicide.

Saint Augustine on suicide

Across many of his great works – most systematically in the first volume of The City of God – Augustine cast suicide into the realm of sin, even if done in the name of religious zeal.

The basis of his argument was theological principles, including how life was a gift from God and so ending it intentionally amounted to usurping divine authority. Suicide – in Augustine’s view – goes against the commandment, “thou shalt not kill”, which applies equally to oneself as it does to other people, and also the commandment to love your neighbour “as yourself”. How can you love your neighbour if you do not love yourself enough to live?

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He scrutinised Biblical examples, including the aforementioned death of Samson. Augustine absolved him by arguing that his death was not his primary aim (which was actually the destruction of the Philistine temple).

Philosophical principles also underlined Augustine’s argument, namely the Platonic idea that the desire to live is essential for achieving true happiness. A person should instinctively flee from death and every life is worth living, he contested. It was his belief that endorsing suicide therefore implies that certain lives can be deemed as worthless.

Was Saint Augustine successful against the Donatists?

To take Augustine’s attacks on the Donatist view on martyrdom is to imagine that the cliffs of North Africa were constantly teeming with religious zealots leaping off en masse in the name of divine glory. Augustine wrote, not hiding his cynicism, that they attempted “to fly from these cliffs, but they could not fly, and so they died”.

It was not just Augustine’s words that attacked Donatism. He simultaneously petitioned the Emperor Honorious, who eventually sent a legion to deal with the matter.

In AD 419, the Romans laid siege to the Donatist hub of Timgad. Befitting their attitude towards martyrdom, the bishop there, Gaudentius, is reported to have threatened to set the basilica on fire with everyone inside rather than surrender. It should be said, however, that this report was made by Augustine himself.

Augustine then wrote to the Roman officer in charge, saying that while Christian texts contain examples of people who take their own lives, and are even praised for it, “they are either not suitable to the present time or were not correctly done even at that time”.

Augustine ultimately failed in ending Donatism – the sect continued until the seventh century in one form or another – but his words on suicide had categorically laid out the Church’s position, and he had the authority and reputation to ensure that this position would become deeply rooted.

What was the response to Saint Augustine’s views on suicide in medieval times?

So much of the doctrine of the Church would be influenced or even defined by Augustine, not just his views on suicide. His argument that taking one’s own life is a sin was widely accepted; in fact, it would not be challenged in any substantial way again.

In the Decretum Gratiani, a vast collection of canon law compiled by an Italian monk named Gratian around 1140, an excerpt from The City of God was added, alongside the unequivocal declaration: “But no one is allowed to kill himself by any authority of the law.”

More than that, Gratian went on, anyone who does kill themselves should be denied proper funerary rites. “No commemoration should be made for them” and their bodies should not be “led to their burial with psalms”.

In the 13th century, Thomas Aquinas – an Italian friar and another profoundly important thinker in the Western Church – gave three reasons why suicide was unlawful. The first was that “everything naturally loves itself”, so taking your own life is “contrary to the inclination of nature”.

The second was that every person belongs to their community, and choosing to remove yourself from it “injures the community”. And the third reason was that life is “God’s gift to man” and “it belongs to God alone to pronounce sentence of death and life”.

Since then, a tenet of Christianity in Western Europe – and one seen in other cultures around the world – has been that suicide is against the word of God. But it was Saint Augustine who translated the word of God.