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Droge’s Inconsistency

Arthur J. Droge’s “Did Paul Commit Suicide?” BR 05:06, argues that, in the ancient world before Augustine, suicide was commonly justified as a deliverance from evil, a triumph over fate, an ultimate act of freedom and an immediate opening to salvation. With examples taken from biblical and post—biblical Jewish literature and from Greek, Roman and Christian writings, Dr. Droge documents his thesis that suicide was regarded as an acceptable, noble and even a religious alternative to continued earthly life. In considering the possibility of Paul’s suicide as reasonable, we are urged to do so in the context of “Paul’s time, not from our own perspective and not from the perspective of the post-Augustine period.”

I am willing to entertain this possibility, but I am somewhat puzzled. If suicide is such a worthy, even heroic option for a reflective or religious person, then why must. Droge contend, regarding Paul’s alleged suicide, that perhaps Luke “deliberately suppressed the information,” and that the later writers, too, had “something they were trying to conceal.”

If Paul could have committed suicide “with a clear conscience and with the expectation that he would pass into immortality, united with Christ,” then why would early Christians have hidden this wonderful act as if it were some shameful secret? Why not bruit it about and regale us with narrative details the way the Stoics, rabbis and Maccabeans did of their martyred saints? Luke would have loved the opportunity!