section_path: Social and culture/Religious views/Christianity
section_name: Christianity
paragraph_text: Christianity
  
  Most forms of Christianity consider suicide sinful, based mainly on the writings of influential Christian thinkers of the Middle Ages, such as St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, but suicide was not considered a sin under the Byzantine Christian code of Justinian, for instance. In Catholic and Orthodox doctrine, suicide is considered to be murder, violating the commandment "Thou shalt not kill," and historically neither church would even hold a burial service for a member that died by suicide, deeming it an act that condemned the person to hell, since they died in a state of mortal sin. The basic idea being that life is a gift given by God which should not be spurned, and that suicide is against the "natural order" and thus interferes with God's master plan for the world. However, it is believed that mental illness or grave fear of suffering diminishes the responsibility of the one completing suicide.