Is Assisted Suicide a Sin?

This is a theological question that is answered in varying ways by different religions and religious denominations. Some equate requesting and receiving aid-in-dying, regardless of the presence of intolerable suffering and terminal illness, as an act of suicide; they also equate providing assistance with killing. Others define requesting and providing assistance as justifiable and merciful.


This is a theological question that is answered in varying ways by different religions and religious denominations. Some equate requesting and receiving aid-in-dying, regardless of the presence of intolerable suffering and terminal illness, as an act of suicide; they also equate providing assistance with killing. Others define requesting and providing assistance as justifiable and merciful.

Suicide is not prohibited by either the Old or the New Testament, and religious views on it are not static but have changed over time. Current Catholic Church theology, for example, argues that suicide is not a sin, but an irrational act for which the victim is not accountable. This is a modern change, however, that reverses a position held for more than fourteen hundred years. The first Christian declaration against it was made by Augustine in his City of God in the early 5th century, and suicide was officially declared a sin at the Council of Arles in 452 A.D., which reaffirmed Roman slave clauses prohibiting suicide by servants. Some writers suggest that this change was prompted by the sheer volume of deliberate acts of martyrdom in the early church, which amounted to about one hundred thousand deaths. Also common were deaths resulting from ascetic self-penance. Martyrdom was seen as erasing all sin and ensuring a quick passage to heaven, and suicide following baptism was seen as a logical way to avoid sin. There are numerous reports, moreover, of mobs of early Christians demanding death sentences at the hands of the Romans, and this practice of “assisted suicide” was so extensive that Clement, bishop of Alexandria, condemned deliberate martyrdom, not because he saw suicide as a sin, but because the martyr tempted the pagan to commit the act of murder.