All Articles For Euthanasia

Herman C. Hanko is professor of Church History and New Testament in the Protestant Reformed Seminary. Dying was once, from a certain point of view, a rather simple matter. A person grew up, took up his life’s work, worked hard (usually without vacation) until he was in his sixties or seventies, and after his “threescore and ten years” or “fourscore years if strength was great,” he died. He never thought of retirement, social security, pension plans, spending his “golden years” profitably. He lived and worked—and went to his eternal reward. As is true of so many things in life, modern...

Herman C. Hanko is professor of Church History and New Testament in the Protestant Reformed Seminary. The problem of euthanasia is a difficult and complex one, partly because the term is used for so many different procedures and under so many different circumstances. Generally speaking, the term can refer: to withholding of that which is necessary to sustain life. But one can withhold life support equipment such as respirators or heart-lung machines; one can even withhold food and water, whether given by mouth or given intravenously. That is one kind of euthanasia, usually called. passive euthanasia. But there is another...

Herman C. Hanko is professor of Church History and New Testament in the Protestant Reformed Seminary. In previous articles we have attempted to point out the complexity of the problem of so-called euthanasia and see some of the ramifications of it in our present-day society. In the next two articles, we have to try to come to some conclusions on the matter and offer some guidelines for our thinking. We live in a very strange world, made strange by the presence of sin. Indeed, as the night of sin grows darker and iniquity abounds, the strange inconsistencies of life in...

Herman C. Hanko is professor of Church History and New Testament in the Protestant Reformed Seminary. In our last article we talked about the great evils of euthanasia as it is increasingly being practiced in this country and abroad. In this article we want to attempt to see some light in the many problems which nevertheless arise, and with which the child of God is confronted in various ways by this perplexing problem. The problems really arise out of the advances of medical technology, which has made it possible to sustain or prolong life artificially. That is, various machines are...