Part 7

The treatise "Against Lying" was written by Augustine with special reference to the practice and teaching of the sect of Priscillianists. These Christians "affirmed, with some other of the theosophic sects, that falsehood was allowable for a holy end. Absolute veracity was only binding between fellow-members of their sect." Hence it was claimed by some other Christians that it would be fair to shut out Priscillianists from a right to have only truth spoken to them, since they would not admit that it is always binding between man and man. This view of truthfulness as merely a social obligation Augustine utterly repudiated; as, indeed, must be the case with every one who reckons lying a sin in and of itself. Augustine considered, in this treatise, various hypothetical cases, in which the telling of the truth might result in death to a sick man, while the telling of a falsehood might save his life. He said frankly: "And who can bear men casting up to him what a mischief it is to shun a lie that might save life, and to choose truth which might murder a man? I am moved by this objection exceedingly, but it were doubtful whether also wisely." Yet he sees that it were never safe to choose sin as a means to good, in preference to truth and right with all their consequences.

Jerome having, like many others, adopted Origen's explanation of the scene between Peter and Paul at Antioch, Augustine wrote to him in protest against such teaching, with its implied approval of deceit and falsehood. A correspondence on this subject was continued between these two Fathers for years; and finally Jerome was led to adopt Augustine's view of the matter, and also to condemn Origen for his loose views as to the duty of veracity. But however Jerome might vacillate in his theory, as in his practice, concerning the permanent obligations of truthfulness, Augustine stood firm from first to last in the position which is justified by the teachings of the Bible and by the moral sense of the human race as a whole,--that a lie is always a lie and always a sin, and that a lie can never be justified as a means to even the best of ends.

From the days of Chrysostom and Augustine to the present time, all discussions of this question have been but a repetition of the arguments and objections then brought forward and examined. There can be, in fact, only two positions maintained with any show of logical consistency. Either a lie is in its very nature antagonistic to the being of God, and therefore not to be used or approved by him, whatever immediate advantages might accrue from it, or whatever consequences might pivot on its rejection; or a lie is not in itself a sin, is not essentially at variance with the nature of God, but is good or evil according to the spirit of its use, and the end to be gained by it; and therefore on occasions God could lie, or could approve lying on the part of those who represent him.

The first of these positions is that maintained by the Shepherd of Hermas, by Justin Martyr, by Basil the Great, and by Augustine; the second is practically that occupied by Gregory of Nyssa and Chrysostom, even though they do not explicitly define, or even seem to perceive, it as their position. There are, again, those like Origen and Jerome, who are now on one side of the dividing line, and now on the other; but they are not logically consistent with themselves in their opinions or practices. And those who are not consistent usually refrain from explicit definitions of the lie and of falsehood; they make no attempt at distinguishing between justifiable concealment, and concealment for the very purpose of deception.

With all the arguments on this question, in all the centuries, comprised within these well-defined bounds, it were useless to name each prominent disputant, in order merely to classify him as on the one side or on the other, or as zigzagging along the line which he fails to perceive. It were sufficient to point out a few pre-eminent mountain peaks, in the centuries between the fifth and the nineteen of the Christian era, as indicative of the perspective history of this discussion.

Towering above the greatest of the Schoolmen in the later middle ages stands Thomas Aquinas. As a man of massive intellect, of keenness of perception, of consistent logical instincts, and of unquestioned sincerity and great personal devoutness, we might expect him to be found, like Augustine, on the side of principle against policy, in unqualified condemnation of lying under any circumstances whatsoever, and in advocacy of truthfulness at all hazards. And that, as a matter of fact, is his position.

In his Summa Theologies Aquinas discusses this whole question with eminent fairness, and with great thoroughness. He first states the claims of those who, from the days of Chrysostom, had made excuses for lying with a good end in view, and then he meets those claims severally. He looks upon lies as evil in themselves, and as in no way to be deemed good and lawful, since a right concurrence of all elements is essential to a thing's being good. "Whence, every lie is a sin, as Augustine says in his book 'Against Lying.'" His conclusion, in view of all that is to be said on both sides of the question, is: "Lying is sinful not only as harmful to our neighbor, but because of its own disorderliness. It is no more permitted to do what is disorderly [that is, contrary to the divine order of the universe] in order to prevent harm, than it is to steal for the purpose of giving alms, except indeed in case of necessity when all things are common property [when, for instance, the taking of needful food in time of a great disaster, as on a wrecked ship, is not stealing]. And therefore it is not allowable to utter a lie with this view, that we may deliver one from some peril. It is allowable, however, to conceal the truth prudently, by a sort of dissimulation, as Augustine says." This recognizes the correctness of Augustine's position, that concealment of what one has a right to conceal may be right, provided no lie is involved in the concealment. As to the relative grades of sin in lying, Aquinas counts lying to another's hurt as a mortal sin, and lying to avert harm from another as a venial sin; but he sees that both are sins.

It is natural to find Aquinas, as a representative of the keen-minded Dominicans, standing by truth as an eternal principle, regardless of consequences; as it is also natural to find, on the other side, Duns Scotus, as a representative of the easy-going Franciscans, with his denial of good absolute save as manifested in the arbitrary will of God. Duns Scotus accepted the "theory of a twofold truth," ascribed to Averroes, "that one and the same affirmation might be theologically true and philosophically false, and vice versa." In Duns Scotus's view, "God does not choose a thing because it is good, but the thing chosen is good because God chooses it;" "it is good simply and solely because God has willed it precisely so; but he might just as readily have willed the opposite thereof. Hence also God is not [eternally] bound by his commands, and he can in fact annul them." According to this view, God could forbid lying to-day and justify it to-morrow. It is not surprising, therefore, that "falsehood and misrepresentation" are "under certain circumstances allowable," in the opinion of Duns Scotus.

So, all along the centuries, the religious teacher who holds to the line between truth and falsehood as an eternal line must, if logically consistent, refuse to admit any possible justification of lying. Only he who denies an eternally absolute line between the true and the false could admit with consistency the justification by God of an act that is essentially hostile to the divine nature. Any exception to this rule is likely to be where a sympathetic nature inclines a teacher to seek for an excuse for that which seems desirable even though it be theoretically wrong.

When it comes to the days of the Protestant Reformation, we find John Calvin, like his prototype Augustine, and like Augustine's follower Aquinas, standing firmly against a lie as antagonistic to the very nature of God, and therefore never justifiable. Martin Luther, also, is a fearless lover of the truth; but he is disposed to find excuses for a lie told with a good end in view, although he refrains from asserting that even the best disposed lie lacks the element of sinfulness. On the other hand, Ignatius Loyola, and his associates in the founding of the Society of Jesus as a means of checking the Protestant Reformation, acted on the idea that was involved in the theology of Duns Scotus, that the only standard of truth and right is in the absolute and arbitrary will of God; and that, therefore, if God, speaking through his representative in the newly formed Society, commands the telling of a lie, a lie is justifiable, and its telling is a duty. Moreover, these Jesuit leaders in defining, or in explaining away, the lie, include, under the head of justifiable concealment, equivocations and falsifications that the ordinary mind would see to be forms of the lie.

It is common to point to the arguments of the Jesuits in favor of lies of expediency, in their work for the Church and for souls, as though their position were exceptional, and they stood all by themselves in including falsehood as a means to be employed rightfully for a good end.

But in this they are simply logically consistent followers of those Christian Fathers, and their successors in every branch of the Church, who have held that a lie for righteous purposes was admissible when the results to be secured by it were of vital importance. All the refinements of casuistry have their value to those who admit that a lie may be right under certain conceivable circumstances; but to those who, like Augustine and Aquinas, insist that a lie is a sin per se, and therefore never admissible, casuistry itself has no interest as a means of showing when a sin is not sinful.

Some of the zealous defenders of the principles and methods of the Jesuits affirm that, in their advocacy of dissimulation and prevarication in the interests of a good cause, the Jesuits do not intend to justify lying, but are pointing out methods of proper concealment which are not within the realm of the lie. In this (waiving the question whether these defenders are right or not as to the fact) they seem even more desirous of being counted against lying than those teachers, in the Romish Church or among Protestants, who boldly affirm that a lie itself is sometimes justifiable. Thus it is claimed by a Roman Catholic writer, in defense of the Jesuits, that Liguori, their favorite theologian, taught "that to speak falsely is immutably a sin against God. It may be permitted under no circumstances, not even to save life. Pope Innocent III. says, 'Not even to defend our life is it lawful to speak falsely;'" therefore, when Liguori approves any actions that seem opposed to truthfulness, "he allows the instances because they are not falsehood." On the other hand, Jeremy Taylor squarely asserts: "It is lawful to tell a lie to children or to madmen, because they, having no powers of judging, have no right to the truth."

But Jeremy Taylor's trouble is in his indefinite definition of "a lie," and in his consequent confusion of mind and of statement with reference to the limitations of the duty of veracity. He writes on this subject at considerable length, and in alternation declares himself plainly first on one side, and then on the other, of the main question, without even an attempt at logical consistency. He starts out with the idea that "we are to endeavor to be like God, who is truth essentially;" that "God speaks truth because it is his nature;" that "the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament do indefinitely and severely forbid lying," and "our blessed Saviour condemns it by declaring every lie to be of the Devil;" and that "beyond these things nothing can [could] be said for the condemnation of lying." All that certainly is explicit and sound,--as sound as Basil the Great, as St. Augustine, or as Thomas Aquinas!

When he attempts the definition of a lie, however, Jeremy Taylor would seem to claim that injustice toward others and an evil motive are of its very essence, and that, if these be lacking, a lie is not a lie. "Lying is to be understood to be something said or written to the hurt of a neighbor, which cannot be understood [by the hearer or reader] otherwise than to differ from the mind of him that speaks." As Melanchthon says, "To lie is to deceive our neighbor to his hurt." "If a lie be unjust, it can never become lawful; but if it can be separate from injustice, then it may be innocent."

Jeremy Taylor naturally falls back on the Bible stories of the Hebrew midwives and Rahab the harlot, and assumes that God commended their lying, as lying, because they had a good end in view; and he asserts that "it is necessary sometimes by a lie to advantage charity by losing of a truth to save a life," and that "to tell a lie for charity, to save a man's life, the life of a friend, of a husband, of a prince, of an useful and a public person, hath not only been done in all times, but commended by great and wise and good men." From this it would appear that lying, which Jeremy Taylor sets out with denouncing as contrary to God's nature, and as declared by our Saviour to be always of the Devil, may, under certain circumstances, be a godly sin. Gregory of Nyssa and young Chrysostom could not have done better than this in showing the sinlessness of a sin in a good cause.

Seeing that concealment of that which is true is often a duty, and seeing also that concealment of that which ought to be disclosed is often practically a lie, Jeremy Taylor apparently; jumps to the conclusion that concealment and equivocation and lying are practically the same thing, and that therefore lying is sometimes a duty, while again it is a sin. He holds that the right to be spoken to in truthfulness, "though it be regularly and commonly belonging to all men, yet it may be taken away by a superior right supervening; or it may be lost, or it may be hindered, or it may cease upon a greater reason." As "that which is but the half of a true proposition either signifies nothing or is directly a lie," it must be admitted that "in the same cases in which it is lawful to tell a lie, in the same cases it is lawful to use a mental reservation;" and "where it is lawful to lie, it is lawful to equivocate, which may be something less than a plain lie." Moreover, "it is lawful upon a just cause of great charity or necessity to use, in our answers and intercourses, words of divers signification, though it does deceive him that asks."

Jeremy Taylor ingenuously confesses that, in certain cases where lying is allowable or is a duty, "the prejudice which the question is like to have is in the meaning and evil sound of the word lying; which, because it is so hateful to God and man, casts a cloud upon anything that it comes near." But, on the whole, Jeremy Taylor is willing to employ with commendation that very word "lying" which is "so hateful to God and man." And in various cases he insists that "it is lawful to tell a lie," although "the lie must be charitable and useful,"--a good lie, and not a wicked lie; for a good lie is good, and a wicked lie is wicked. He does not shrink from the consequences of his false position.

Jeremy Taylor can therefore be cited as arguing that a lie is never admissible, but that it often is commendable. He does not seem to be quite sure of any real difference between lying and justifiable concealment, or to have in his mind an unvarying line between truthfulness and lying. He admits that God and man hate lying, but that a good lie, nevertheless, is a very good thing. And so he leaves the subject in more of a muddle than he found it.

Coming down to the present century, perhaps the most prominent and influential defender of the "lie of necessity," or of limitations to the law of veracity, is Richard Rothe; therefore it is important to give special attention to his opinions and arguments on this subject. Rothe was a man of great ability, of lovely spirit, and of pervasive personal influence; and as a consequence his opinions carry special weight with his numerous pupils and followers.

Kurtz characterizes Rothe as "one of the most profound thinkers of the century, equaled by none of his contemporaries in the grasp, depth, and originality of his speculation," and his "Theological Ethics" as "a work which in depth, originality, and conclusiveness of reasoning, is almost unapproached." And in the opinion of Lichtenberger, Rothe "is unquestionably the most distinguished theologian of the School of Conciliation, and the most original thinker since Schleiermacher," while "he also showed himself to be one of the humblest Christians and one of the finest formed characters of his age." It is not to be wondered at therefore, that, when such a leader in thought and in influence as Rothe declares himself in favor of a judicious use of falsehood as a means of good, many are inclined to feel that there must be some sound reason for his course. Yet, on the other hand, the arguments in favor of falsehood, put forward by even such a man, ought to be scrutinized with care, in order to ascertain if they are anything more than the familiar arguments on the same side repeated in varying phrase in all the former centuries from Chrysostom to Jeremy Taylor.

The trouble with Rothe in his treatment of this Matter is, that he considers the duty of truthfulness merely in its personal and social aspects, without any direct reference to the nature, and the declared will, of God. Moreover, his peculiar definition of a lie is adapted to his view of the necessities of the case. He defines a lie as "the unloving misuse of speech (or of other recognized means of communication) to the intentional deception of our neighbor." In his mind, lovelessness toward one's fellow-man is of the very essence of the lie, and when one speaks falsely in expression of a spirit of love to others, it is not necessarily a lie.

Rothe does not seem to recognize, in its application to this matter, the great principle that there is no true love for man except in conformity to and in expression of love for God; hence that nothing that is in direct violation of a primal law of God can be an exhibition of real love for one of God's creatures.

It is true that Rothe assumes that the subject of Theological Ethics is an essential branch of Speculative Theology; but in his treatment of Special Duties he seems to assume that Society rather than God is their background, and therefore the idea of sin as sin does not enter into the discussion. His whole argument and his conclusions are an illustration of the folly of attempting to solve any problem in ethics without considering the relation to it of God's eternal laws, and of the eternal principles which are involved in the very conception of God. Ethics necessarily includes more than social duties, and must be considered in the light of duty to God as above all.

"The intentional deception of our neighbor," says Rothe, "by saying what is untrue, is not invariably and unqualifiedly a lie. The question in this case is essentially one of the purpose.... It is only in the case where the untruth spoken with intent to deceive is at the same time an act of unlovingness toward our neighbor, that it is a violation of truthfulness as already defined, that is, a lie." In Rothe's view, "there are relations of men to each other in which [for the time being] avowedly the ethical fellowship does not exist, although the suspension of this fellowship must, of course, always be regarded as temporary, and this indeed as a matter of duty for at least one of the parties. Here there can be no mention of love, and therefore no more of the want of it." Social duties being in such cases suspended, and the idea of any special duty toward God not being in consideration, it is quite proper, as Rothe sees it, for enemies in war, or in private life, to speak falsely to each other. Such enemies "naturally have in speech simply a weapon which one may use against the other.... The duty of speaking the truth cannot even be thought of as existing between persons so arrayed against each other.... However they may try to deceive each other, even with the help of speech, they do not lie."

But Rothe goes even farther than this in the advocacy of such violations, or abrogations, of the law of veracity, as would undermine the very foundations of social life, and as would render the law against falsehood little more than a variable personal rule for limited and selected applications,--after the fashion of the American humorist who "believed in universal salvation if he could pick his men." Rothe teaches that falsehood is a duty, not only when it is needful in dealing with public or personal enemies, but often, also, in dealing with "children, the sick, the insane, the drunken, the passionately excited, and the morally weak,"--and that takes in a large share of the human race. He gives many illustrations of falsehood supposed to be necessary (where, in fact, they would seem to the keen-minded reader to be quite superfluous) and having affirmed the duty of false speaking in these cases, he takes it for granted (in a strange misconception of the moral sense of mankind) that the deceived parties would, if appealed to in their better senses, justify the falsehoods spoken by mothers in the nursery, by physicians in the sick-room, and by the clear-headed sober man in his intercourse with the angry or foolish or drunken individual.

"Of course," he says, "such a procedure presupposes a certain relation of guardianship, on the part of the one who speaks untruth, over him whom he deceives, and a relative irresponsibility on the part of the other,--an incapacity to make use of certain truths except to his actual moral injury. And in each case all depends on the accuracy of this assumption." It is appalling to find a man like Rothe announcing a principle like this as operative in social ethics! Every man to decide for himself (taking the responsibility, of course, for his personal decision) whether he is in any sense such a guardian of his fellow-man as shall make it his duty to speak falsely to him in love!

Rothe frankly admits that there is no evidence that Jesus Christ, while setting an example here among men, ever spoke one of these dutiful untruths; although it certainly would seem that Jesus might have fairly claimed as good a right to a guardianship of his earthly fellows as the average man of nowadays. But this does not restrain Rothe from deliberately advising his fellow-men to a different course.