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So my pastor has spoken on the topic of Christian suicide before. I believe his position on this issue stems from his belief in the doctrine “Once Saved Always Saved” (ie you can’t lose your salvation once you’re a Christian). Anyway, I was listening to the Bible on my commute home last night and I heard something that may conflict with his espousals:

1Co 3:16-17 ESV Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you? (17) If anyone destroys God’s temple, God will destroy him. For God’s temple is holy, and you are that temple.

Now the word used here, in both cases for “destroy” is “φθείρω” or “phtheirei”. Here’s what Thayer says:

G5351
φθείρω
phtheirō
Thayer Definition:
1) to corrupt, to destroy
1a) in the opinion of the Jews, the temple was corrupted or “destroyed” when anyone defiled or in the slightest degree damaged anything in it, or if its guardians neglected their duties
1b) to lead away a Christian church from that state of knowledge and holiness in which it ought to abide
1c) to be destroyed, to perish
1d) in an ethical sense, to corrupt, deprave
Part of Speech: verb
A Related Word by Thayer’s/Strong’s Number: probably strengthened from phthio (to pine or waste)
Citing in TDNT: 9:93, 1259

The verse in the KJV is slightly different, where the first instance is rendered “defile” and the second “destroy”. RWP shows that they are conjugated the same in the autographa, but his commentary is kind of out of line, and for some reason he attributes this “temple” not to the body of the individual believer, but to all of the believers in the church at Corinth as a whole, and so he points this verse at the “church-wrecker”. Pretty much all the commentaries correct the KJV and say that it should be “destroy” instead of “defile”.

Gill’s commentary seems to be based on the KJV rendering of “defile”. His interpretation of the second destroy is “body and soul in hell”.

Clarke also says that God will “take away his part out of the book of life”.

For my part, I believe that the temple is the body of the believer, for:

Joh 14:16-17 ESV And I will ask the Father, and he will give you another Helper, to be with you forever, (17) even the Spirit of truth, whom the world cannot receive, because it neither sees him nor knows him. You know him, for he dwells with you and will be in you.

Rom 8:9 ESV You, however, are not in the flesh but in the Spirit, if in fact the Spirit of God dwells in you. Anyone who does not have the Spirit of Christ does not belong to him.

as well as the preceeding verse to the one in question, namely 1Co 3:16, which explicitly states:

1Co 3:16 ESV Do you not know that you are God’s temple and that God’s Spirit dwells in you?

And if the body of the believer is indeed the “God’s temple”, and if anyone who “destroys God’s temple” will be “destroyed” by God, then we have a couple of possibilities.

1. The person who kills a Christian is eternally damned.

1. The person who kills a Christian will be bodily slain by God

If the former is true, then the “Christian” suicide may well lose his salvation, for:

1Co 6:19-20 ESV Or do you not know that your body is a temple of the Holy Spirit within you, whom you have from God? You are not your own, (20) for you were bought with a price. So glorify God in your body.

While God does say:

Joh 10:28 ESV I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.

I’m not sure that that means that they cannot choose to “jump” out of his hand (that’s a lot of thats for that). To wit:

Heb 6:4-8 ESV For it is impossible to restore again to repentance those who have once been enlightened, who have tasted the heavenly gift, and have shared in the Holy Spirit, (5) and have tasted the goodness of the word of God and the powers of the age to come, (6) if they then fall away, since they are crucifying once again the Son of God to their own harm and holding him up to contempt. (7) For land that has drunk the rain that often falls on it, and produces a crop useful to those for whose sake it is cultivated, receives a blessing from God. (8) But if it bears thorns and thistles, it is worthless and near to being cursed, and its end is to be burned.

One might thereby answer with

1Co 3:15 ESV If anyone’s work is burned up, he will suffer loss, though he himself will be saved, but only as through fire.

but please note that the latter speaks to the person’s work, whereas the former speaks to the land itself.

However, VWS gives some valuable insight into the usage of φθείρει in the classical Greek:

Defile (φθείρει)
Rev., more correctly, destroy. This is the primary and almost universal meaning in classical Greek. In a fragment of Euripides it occurs of dishonoring a female. Sophocles uses it of women pining away in barrenness, and Plutarch of mixing pure colors. The phrase seems to be used here according to the Jewish idea that the temple was destroyed or corrupted by the slightest defilement or damage, or by neglect on the part of its guardians. Ignatius says: “οἱ οἰκοφθόροι; violators of the house (of God) shall not inherit the kingdom of God” (To the Ephesians, 16).

This fits with what Jesus said in the synoptic gospels:

Mat 18:2-7 ESV And calling to him a child, he put him in the midst of them (3) and said, “Truly, I say to you, unless you turn and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. (4) Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. (5) “Whoever receives one such child in my name receives me, (6) but whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him to have a great millstone fastened around his neck and to be drowned in the depth of the sea. (7) “Woe to the world for temptations to sin! For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes!

And while we may find parity there, it does not necessitate the meaning of destroy in that passage. It seems reasonable to me that if they are both conjugated the same way so close to one another with the relationship they have in the passage, the word would keep the same meaning.

So let’s talk about God’s “destroying” this person. This could be his killing of the person, but everyone dies, so I’m not sure that is really a viable position. If the former “destroy” is interpreted as spiritual corruption, then perhaps God would allow the “causer” to be lead into even more corruption. But is something that is already destroyed (corrupt) able to be further corrupted? Think about the colors, and “slightest defilement”. It’s like a balloon that’s been popped; will more tears in the balloon cause it to be any more popped? No, if it’s popped it’s popped. Adding more damage to the popped balloon doesn’t do anything to it, since it is already “destroyed”. So if the “causer” is not holy, how can he be “destroyed”? He is already defiled! This line of thinking seems to invalidate the proposition that the former “destroy” is actually “corruption”, providing that there is in fact a parity in meaning between the two uses of the same word in the same sentence.

If it is not a spiritual corruption or destruction (I rule out destruction because of John 10:28), then it must necessarily be a physical corruption or destruction. If the latter means physical destruction, then it means that God’s going to end that person’s life. Everyone dies, and I don’t think that’s a viable position to take.

I guess I interpret the passage to mean physical destruction of the former, and spiritual destruction of the latter. It could conceivably mean spiritual corruption of the former, and spiritual destruction of the latter (and this would fit with Mat 18:2-7).