For two millennia Christian tradition has maintained a consistent voice opposing suicide. Though theological divergence between Roman Catholics and Protestants is essentially soteriological—e.g., mortal sin as unpardonable—theologians agreed that a human being was morally responsible and gravely wrong in killing him or herself.
For a variety of philosophical reasons contemporary discussion on suicide has shifted the onus of responsibility from the volition of human subject to sub-personal and even impersonal factors. The reasons for such are complex and range from philosophical materialism to monistic versions of anthropology to newfound knowledge of brain chemistry. These considerations have made Christians think of suicide less as a willful repudiation of God and his world, and more akin to lapse in judgement.
This becomes obvious in the ways evangelical Christians advise pastors to do funerals for those who commit suicide, treating the deceased as a possible victim of forces outside his or her control. Philip Rieff famously coined the phrase “age of the therapeutic,” an epoch which remains ours and whose influence we are neither immune nor averse, nor at times, aware. This essay will consider evangelical assessment of suicide, explore possible causes for the shift in language over the tradition’s nearly three centuries, and identity salient implications.