Praise for How Should We Then Die?

Rarely has a book been needed as urgently as this one. Rarely has an author been better qualified to write it. I urge all Christians to prepare themselves to be able to provide a truly biblical response to one of the defining ethical issues of our day.

—Tim Challies, author of Seasons of Sorrow: The Pain of Loss and the Comfort of God

Possibly the most important ethical issue of our time, the practice of offering assisted dying makes an implicit claim about how we regard the value of human life. How Should We Then Die? will help laity to understand the legal, medical, ethical, and theological matters at stake in the debate.

—Kathryn Greene-McCreight, priest affiliate of Christ Church, New Haven; author of Darkness Is My Only Companion: A Christian Response to Mental Illness

Through clear, measured, and probing reflections, Dr. Goligher offers a diagnostic guide that helps us understand why euthanasia is deceptively attractive to those who are suffering or fear the loss of what they consider a life worth living. Combining Christian faith and reason, analysis and experience, his insights shine needed light on how we should think about death, dignity, and the value of every human life and how euthanasia medicalizes death and devalues life. His wise counsel reaffirms the need for faith, hope, and love to address our darkest fears and satisfy our deepest yearnings for comfort, both in life and in death.

—Lauris C. Kaldjian, MD, director, Program in Bioethics and Humanities, Richard M. Caplan Chair in Biomedical Ethics and Medical Humanities, and professor, Department of Internal Medicine, Carver College of Medicine, University of Iowa

This is the kind of contribution to the debate that we need a great deal more of: a practicing physician who, having learned of life and death from his patients and his practice, has made use of widely read reflection to interpret them. The inherent contradictions of a practice based on despair appear with a clarity that perhaps no philosopher or theologian could give them.

—Oliver O’Donovan, professor emeritus of Christian ethics and practical theology, University of Edinburgh