Did Paul Commit Suicide?

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The question this article will explore may appear disturbing at first sight, and for good reason. Since Augustine’s time, the church has condemned suicide as a sin—a sin beyond redemption, just like apostasy and adultery. How then could Paul, the premier apostle of early Christianity, even have contemplated suicide, much less gone through with it?

Three bits of evidence suggest this possibility.

The first is contextual; it concerns how suicide was viewed in Paul’s time.

I said that suicide has been condemned as a sin since Augustine’s time. He lived in the second half of the fourth century and the first third of the fifth century. In his confrontation with the Donatists, a powerful Christian sect in North Africa, Augustine sought to redefine the terms “martyrdom” and “suicide.” He argued that the Donatist “martyrs” were in fact merely “suicides”—that is to say, self-murderers.¹ As is well known, Augustine’s case against suicide was based on Plato, not the Bible. Aside from his appeal to the sixth commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” Augustine took over the Pythagorean argument against suicide in Plato’s Phaedo: that to sever the bonds of body and soul prematurely was to usurp a privilege that belonged only to God.²

Since Augustine’s time the iniquity associated with suicide has generally increased. Over the ages, suicide has been regarded not only as “sinful,” but as “cowardly,” “irrational” and, more recently, as a “symptom” of psychological or social disorder.

But in the ancient world before Augustine, this was not the case. In fact, suicide was rather common. Many people considered suicide justified as a deliverance from all sorts of affliction and oppression. Some even extolled suicide as the greatest triumph an individual could exert over fate; others saw in suicide an act of supreme freedom, or a means of attaining immediate salvation.

In general, ancient society did not discriminate against the person who took his own life, nor did it attach any particular disgrace to the act itself, provided there was sufficient justification for it. We moderns tend to be more concerned with the act of suicide itself, whereas in antiquity what occupied religious and philosophical thinkers were the reasons that might justify suicide.³

Augustine and later Christian theologians had considerable difficulty defending their condemnation of suicide, because neither the Hebrew Bible nor the New Testament explicitly prohibits the act. The Hebrew Bible records five cases of suicide. In two cases, someone who was already wounded preferred to die by his own hand (or, more precisely, in one case, by the hand of his arms-bearer). Abimelech, 016Gideon’s ambitious son who had himself declared king of Shechem, was mortally wounded by a woman who dropped a millstone on his head.

“[Abimelech] immediately cried out to his attendant, his arms-bearer, ‘Draw your dagger and finish me off, that they may not say of me, “A woman killed him!” ’ So his attendant stabbed him, and he died” (Judges 9:54).

Similarly when King Saul had been mortally wounded by the Philistines at Mt. Gilboa, he said to his arms-bearer:

“Draw your sword and run me through, so that the uncircumcised may not run me through and make sport of me.’ But his arms-bearer, in his great awe, refused; whereupon Saul grasped the sword and fell upon it. When his arms-bearer saw that Saul was dead, he too fell on his sword and died with him” (1 Samuel 31:4–5; see also 1 Chronicles 10:4–5).

Note that although Saul was already mortally wounded, his arms-bearer committed suicide purely out of devotion to his king.

The fourth case involves a former adviser to King David, Ahithophel, who later deserted to serve David’s rebellious son Absalom. When Absalom decided not to take Ahithophel’s advice, Ahithophel hanged himself (2 Samuel 17:23).

The fifth case is Zimri, an Israelite officer who treasonously murdered King Elah and had himself proclaimed king of Israel. Zimri’s reign lasted a mere seven days. When the army declined to follow Zimri and indeed laid siege to his capital, Zimri closed himself in his royal citadel and set it afire over himself (1 Kings 16:18).

To these, a sixth example might be added: Samson, who deliberately brought the Philistine temple of Gaza down on his head after being blinded (Judges 16:29–30). Later Christian exegetes interpreted Samson’s death as a symbolic foreshadowing of Christ’s self-sacrifice.

The important point, however, is that none of these biblical figures receives censure. Indeed, their deaths by their own hand are scarcely commented on, leading one to conclude that in ancient Israel the act of suicide was regarded as something natural and, in some circumstances, perhaps even heroic.

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To my knowledge, the only instance in the Hebrew Bible where an individual considered death and perhaps wished to kill himself, but did not, is Job (Job 7:15, 13:15).

In Jewish literature of the post-biblical period, pious Jews are often portrayed as taking their lives voluntarily, rather than betray their religious beliefs. In 39 or 40 A.D., for example, when the Roman emperor Gaius announced plans to have a statue of himself erected in the Jerusalem Temple, the Jews solemnly warned the Roman governor Petronius that, if this were carried out, they would first slaughter their women and children and then kill themselves “in contempt of a life which is not a life.”⁴

Although the first-century A.D. Jewish historian, Flavius Josephus, records a lengthy speech that he himself delivered against suicide⁵ (but, as a Jewish general in the First Jewish Revolt against Rome, his own neck was on the line!), in the same book he also praised the heroism of the Jews at Masada, who mutually slaughtered themselves rather than fall into the hands of the Romans.⁶

Perhaps the most famous Jewish example is the suicide of Razis, which occurred during the Maccabean revolt against the Seleucid ruler Antiochus IV. The incident is recorded in gruesome detail in the apocryphal book of 2 Maccabees 14:37–46. Nicanor, a Seleucid commander, sent 500 soldiers to arrest Razis:

“The troops were on the point of capturing the tower where Razis was, and were trying to force the outer door. Then an order was given to set the door on fire. Being surrounded, Razis fell on his own sword, preferring to die nobly rather than fall into the hands of sinners and suffer outrages unworthy of his noble birth. But in the heat of the struggle he did not hit exactly, and the crowd was now rushing in through the doors. He bravely ran up on the wall and manfully threw himself down into the crowed. But as they quickly drew back, a space opened, and he fell in the middle of the empty space. Still alive and aflame with anger, he rose, and though his blood gushed forth and his wounds were severe he ran through the crowd; and standing on a steep rock, with his blood now completely drained from him, he tore out his entrails, took them with both hands and hurled them at the crowd, calling upon the Lord of life and spirit to give them back to him again.”

The theatricality of Razis’s suicide is of a piece with the literary commonplace of the Gymnosophists (Brahmans), who threw themselves into the fire and thereby made a protest against Alexander the Great, and with the stories in Tacitus of the Stoic philosophers who opened their veins in opposition to the emperor Nero. Also similar is the explicit hope of immortality: Razis “tore out his entrails,…calling upon the Lord of life and spirit to give them back to him again.” His act of self-destruction is one of political rebellion, to be sure; but it is also carried out with the full assurance that he will pass over to a higher reality.

In later rabbinic literature, we find numerous stories of suicide, and this despite the usual claim by scholars that the rabbis unequivocally opposed the practice. The Mishnah and Talmuds contain explicit accounts of suicide and martyrdom, as well as discussions relating to the rules and regulations governing both. For example, the Babylonian Talmud (Ketub. 103b) relates that when rabbi Judah the Prince died, a “voice from heaven” (bat qol) 019proclaimed that all those present at his death would enjoy the life of the world to come. When a fuller, who had the misfortune of not calling on the rabbi that day, learned of this, he committed suicide. Immediately, a bat qol announced that he too would live in the world to come.

A similar story in the Mishnah (’Abod. Zar. 18a) describes the martyrdom of Rabbi Hanina ben Teradion during the reign of the emperor Hadrian (117–138 A.D.). The Romans wrapped the rabbi in a Torah scroll and set the scroll on fire; to insure that he would suffer, water-soaked tufts of wool were placed on the rabbi’s heart. His disciples therefore begged him to breathe in the flames in order to hasten an otherwise excruciating death. When the rabbi refused, the pagan executioner asked whether he (the executioner) would enter the world to come if he helped the rabbi die sooner. Receiving an affirmative response, the executioner removed the tufts of wool and the rabbi died. The executioner then threw himself upon the fire. Suddenly, a bat qol proclaimed that both the rabbi and the executioner had been admitted to the world to come. The story concludes: “One may acquire life in a single hour, another after many years.”

In these accounts, suicide is given a clearly positive valuation. Moreover, suicide is understood here not as a cowardly escape from mundane affairs and troubles; rather, it is seen as an act of sincere contrition and simultaneous transformation, enabling the individual to atone for his sins and to attain eternal life. The statement that “one may acquire life in a single hour, another after many years” bespeaks a view of suicide not as a sin but as a particularly ennobling act: both Jew and pagan can be transformed by a well-judged and appropriate death.⁷

In the New Testament there is only one clear case of suicide:⁸ the death of Judas. Remorseful and repentant at betraying Jesus, he hanged himself. Like the examples in the Hebrew Bible, Judas’s suicide is recorded without comment. There is no suggestion that taking his own life was counted as an additional sin (Matthew 27:3–10). Only later did Christian theologians overturn the implicit judgment of Matthew and claim that Judas was more damned by his suicide than by his betrayal of the Messiah.

The death of Jesus, at least as it is recorded in the canonical Gospels, is curiously ambiguous. Was his execution an example of heroic martyrdom or a case of suicide? In an extraordinary passage in the Gospel of John, Jesus’ Jewish hearers understand his repeated sayings about his “going away” as a suicide threat:

“Then said the Jews, ‘Will he kill himself, since he says, “Where I am going, you cannot come?” ’ ” (John 8:22; cf. John 7:34, 13:33).

The church father Tertullian described Jesus’ death as a form of suicide. So did Origen, who affirmed that Jesus voluntarily gave up his spirit, since it was impossible that the deity should be at the mercy of the flesh. Even Augustine recognized that “[Jesus’] spirit did not leave his body against his will, but because he willed it to happen and he willed when and how it happened.”⁹

All the gospels stress Jesus’ prior knowledge of his fate and his willing acceptance of that fate. If it is not always easy to distinguish between suicide and martyrdom, between killing oneself and allowing oneself to be killed for a cause, a principle or belief, then Tertullian and Origen—and even the “Jews” in the Fourth Gospel—were not wrong in describing Jesus’ “going away” as a form of suicide. How else are we to make sense of the provocative statement of the Johannine Jesus: “No one takes my life; I lay it down of my own free will” (John 10:18)? That later theologians judged the act of suicide a sin for which even Jesus’ similar act could hot atone is a telling indication of the distance that Christianity has traveled in its thinking about suicide.

Now let us return to the possibility that Paul committed suicide. In considering this question, we must do so in the context in which suicide was regarded in Paul’s time, not from our own perspective and not from the perspective of the post-Augustinian period.

The next bit of evidence is from one of Paul’s letters, in which we learn that he indeed contemplated taking his own life. Writing from prison in Ephesus, Paul wrestles with the question of suicide (Philippians 1:21–26):

“For me, to live is Christ and to die is gain…. Yet which I shall choose I cannot tell. I am hard pressed between the two. My desire is to depart and be with Christ, for that is far better. But to remain 020in the flesh is more necessary on your account. Convinced of this, I know that I shall remain and continue with you all, for your progress and joy in the faith, so that in me you may have ample cause to glory in Christ Jesus, because of my coming to you again.”

In the final analysis, Paul declares, the gospel will be better served by his continued existence rather than by his departure in death. And so he consents to go on living. But first he carefully considers the advantages of each possibility: “To be or not to be.”

Paul is torn between the necessity of preaching the gospel in his life, on the one hand, and his desire to be united with Christ in death, on the other. Although the former is judged to be “more necessary” (anangkaioteron), the latter is, literally, “much more better” (pollo mallon kreisson), since it means union with Christ and immortality. That is why he can say so emphatically in Philippians 1:23 that he “lusts after death” (epithymia eis to analysai). Although Paul finally rejects the “gain” of death, it is clearly death that he prefers. This is confirmed by a similar statement of his in 2 Corinthians 5:1–8:

“For we know that if the earthly tent we live in is destroyed, we have a building from God, a house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. Here indeed we groan, and long to put on our heavenly dwelling…. For while we are in this tent, we sigh with anxiety; not that we would be unclothed, but that we would be further clothed, so that what is mortal may be swallowed up by life…. So we are always of good courage; we know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord…. We are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord.”

The final sentence is important; for the phrase “we would rather…” (eudokoumen mallon) does not express a preference but a decisive choice.

If death is such a gain, why does Paul finally choose life instead? Here attention must be given to his statement in Philippians 1:24, “To remain in the flesh is more necessary on your [i.e., the Philippians’] account.” In other words, Paul believed that, for the present at least, he was still obligated to his churches and under a divine commission to continue preaching the gospel (see his statement in 1 Corinthians 9:16). While the option of suicide was considered and, indeed, found personally desirable, it was ultimately rejected because it contravened his understanding of the present will of God, namely, that Paul continue his earthly service. But it is not the case that Paul rejected suicide per se, only that it was not yet the appropriate occasion for such an act.

Note that Paul’s reflections on life and death in his letter to the Philippians do not arise from the fact that he faces imminent execution. Although he is in prison, by the time he writes his letter to the church at Philippi he has every reason to expect that his case will receive a favorable verdict from the Romans (Philippians 1:25–26). That is why he can say to the Philippians that he is looking forward to visiting them in the near future (Philippians 2:24).

Paul’s attitude toward suicide was by no means unusual, nor even confined to Christians. A similar position on suicide was endorsed by Paul’s younger contemporary, the Roman Stoic philosopher Musonius Rufus, in a statement that can be read almost as a paraphrase of Paul’s remarks in Philippians 1:21–26. “One who by living is of use to many,” Musonius declares, “has not the right to choose to die, unless by dying he may be of use to more.”¹⁰ Note that Musonius is not opposed to suicide, only to suicide committed without sufficient justification.

The same view is found again in Epictetus, the well-known slave-turned-Stoic philosopher. Epictetus tells us that he encountered a fascination with suicide among some of his students that was so strong that he felt obliged to moderate against it. These young men appealed to him in the following manner:

“Are we not akin to God, and have we not come from him? Allow us to go back whence we came; allow us to be freed from these chains that are fastened to us and weigh us down. Here there are thieves and robbers, and law courts, and those who are called tyrants. They think they have some power over us because of this paltry body and its possessions. Let us show them that they have no power over us.”¹¹

The death-wish of these young Greeks has two sources: first, a longing to escape from the prison of the body (for Paul, “this earthly tent”) and, second, an equally strong desire to return “home,” to attain immortality by reuniting with the deity (for Paul, “to depart and be with Christ”).

I of course recognize that I have not proved that Paul committed suicide, only that it is a reasonable possibility. One final fact, however, points in this direction: We do not know the circumstances of Paul’s death. We do not know how he died. We do not even know when or where.

The last bit of reliable information about Paul’s life comes from his own hand. In Romans 15:22–29, he sketches out his travel plans for the 021immediate future. Writing from Corinth in the mid-50s, Paul tells the Roman Christians that he hopes to visit them in the near future and then to go on from Rome to Spain conducting missionary activity. But first, he says, he must travel to Jerusalem with the collection of money he had been gathering for the “poor among the saints” there. Now we simply do not know whether Paul ever made it to Jerusalem or, if he did, whether he ever reached Rome. (Few would argue that he went on from Rome to Spain.)

The problem is a lack of reliable sources. According to Luke’s account in the Book of Acts, written some 50 to 75 years after the events it purports to relate, Paul did eventually travel to Jerusalem, where he was arrested by the Romans and then sent on to Rome to stand trial before the emperor. Many critical scholars, however, question the historicity of this account.¹² But even Luke ends his account with Paul under house arrest in Rome, with enough freedom to continue preaching “openly and unhindered” for two years (Acts 28:30–31). Luke ends Acts with Paul still alive and preaching openly under the benevolent protection of the Romans. It seems then that Luke either had no information about Paul’s ultimate fate, except what he could glean from Paul’s letters themselves, or that if he knew how Paul died, he deliberately suppressed the information.

The only other New Testament document that deals with Paul’s death is 2 Timothy, a letter forged in Paul’s name sometime in the early second century. Like Acts, it too is curiously silent about the circumstances of Paul’s death. The letter contains a very moving farewell to Timothy by a “Paul” who is apparently facing imminent execution, but it tells us nothing more than that. Was the author of 2 Timothy also ignorant of the details of Paul’s death, or did he too suppress the information?

Aside from the New Testament, we have a document known as the Acts of Paul, written in Asia Minor between 185 and 195. It is even less historically reliable than the canonical Acts. The Acts of Paul concludes with an account of Paul’s martyrdom during the emperor Nero’s reign. According to this account, Paul was arrested in Rome and beheaded (with milk spurting out onto the executioner’s clothing!). After his death, however, Paul appeared to Nero. A good story, to be sure, but nothing more.

It is odd that we know so little about the fate of the man who has been called the founder of Christianity. Did Paul ever reach Rome? Was he brought there to stand trial? Was he then released? Or executed? And why, in any case, did later writers not inform their readers of Paul’s fate? Was there something they were trying to conceal?

There are three possible answers to the question of Paul’s fate. Either he died of natural or accidental causes, or he was arrested and executed or he committed suicide. The first is certainly possible. In his letters, Paul writes of the hardships and dangers to which he was continually exposed in his missionary travels: sickness, hunger, robbers, shipwrecks and so on (Galatians 4:13–14; 2 Corinthians 6:4–10, 11:25–27). It may well be that Paul perished from such circumstances or from old age.

Execution (or martyrdom) is also a possibility. Paul writes of having experienced numerous imprisonments and beatings that left him at the point of death (2 Corinthians 11:23–25). It may be that he died as the result of these, or that having stood trial he was found guilty of sedition and executed (2 Corinthians 1:8–9).

But it is just as possible that Paul died by committing suicide. As his letter to the Philippians reveals, Paul was a man torn between the possibilities of life and death. Indeed, the language of Philippians 1:23 indicates that he strongly desired and seriously considered killing himself as a shortcut to Christ and immortality. Admittedly, he kept himself from it because he believed that his divine mission was not yet complete. But what if Paul believed that his missionary work was finished, that the divine necessity that had been placed upon him had been finally removed? What if he became convinced that “he had fought the good fight and finished the race,” that the time of his departure had come? What if Paul reached the position of failing health or old age, so that he could no longer carry out his divine commission? Then I think it equally possible that Paul would have committed suicide and done so with a clear conscience and with the expectation that he would pass into immortality, united with Christ.

The question this article will explore may appear disturbing at first sight, and for good reason. Since Augustine’s time, the church has condemned suicide as a sin—a sin beyond redemption, just like apostasy and adultery. How then could Paul, the premier apostle of early Christianity, even have contemplated suicide, much less gone through with it? Three bits of evidence suggest this possibility. The first is contextual; it concerns how suicide was viewed in Paul’s time. I said that suicide has been condemned as a sin since Augustine’s time. He lived in the second half of the fourth century and […]