St. Augustine: Discussion on Suicide

Today is Friday...and there is a slight chance for rain. It is going to be a good day.


This week I have read some of St. Augustine's The City of God.  Yesterday I read up to the sections where the discusses the issue of suicide. 'Is it ok to kill oneself in order to prevent a sin from being committed to one's person?' More specifically: Is it ok to kill yourself to prevent a person from raping you?  Which is the greater evil?  At the time when St. Augustine wrote his series of essays the Goths had sacked Rome and many atrocities were committed upon the conquered by the conqueror.


St. Augustine rationalized that when a woman is violated, she is not consenting her will the to deed being done upon her body.  Thus even though a horrible crime is being committed upon her, she is innocent...without sin.  For purity is of the soul not the body.  However, if the woman chose to kill herself before someone raped her, Augustine pointed out that she is committing the greater evil.  The scriptures commanded 'Thou shalt not kill.'  Likewise it also commanded 'Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thy self.'  The extent to which you love your neighbor is in direct connection to how much to love yourself.  Hence then, if the thought of killing oneself in order to preserve one's purity was considered a noble deed, Augustine begged to differ.  


But they who have laid violent hands on themselves are perhaps to be admired for their greatness of soul, though they cannot be applauded for the soundness of their judgment. However, if you look at the matter more closely, you will scarcely call it greatness of soul, which prompts a [person] to kill [himself/herself] rather than bear up against some hardships of fortune, or sins which [he/she] is not implicated. Is it not rather proof of a feeble mind, to be unable to bear either the pains of bodily servitude or the foolish opinion of the vulgar? And is not that to be pronounced the greater mind, which rather faces than flees the ills of life, and which, in comparison of the light and purity of conscience, holds in small esteem the judgment of men, and specially the vulgar, which is frequently involved in a mist of error?