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.
[Footnote 1: _Secunda Secundae_, Quaestio CX., art. III.]
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."[1] 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.
[Footnote 1: See Kurtz's _Church History_ (Macpherson's Translation),
II., 101, 167-169; Ueberweg's _History of Philosophy_, I., 416, 456
f.; Wuttke's _Christian Ethics_ (Am. ed.), I., 218, Sec. 34.]
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.[1] 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.[2]
[Footnote 1: See Martensen's _Christian Ethics_, p. 216. Compare, for
example, Luther's comments on Exodus I: 15-21, with Calvin's comments
on Genesis 12: 14-20.]
[Footnote 2: See Symonds's _Renaissance in Italy_, I., 263-267;
Cartwright's _The Jesuits_; Meyrick's _Moral Theology of the Church
of Rome_; Pascal's _Provincial Letters_. See, also, Kurtz's _Church
History_, II., 430.]
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.[1]
[Footnote 1: Hence the casuistry of the Schoolmen and of the Jesuits,
and the question of Mental Reservations, and of "Probabilities," are
not treated in detail here.]
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."[1] 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."[2]
[Footnote 1: See Meyrick's _Moral Theology of the Church of Rome_,
Appendix, p. 256 f.]
[Footnote 2: Jeremy Taylor's _Ductor Dubitantium_, in his Works, X.,
103.]
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,[1] 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!
[Footnote 1: Jeremy Taylor's _Ductor Dubitantium_, in his Works, X.,
100-132.]
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[1] 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,[2] 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.
[Footnote 1: _Church History_ (Macpherson's translation), III., 201.]
[Footnote 2: _History of German Theology in the 19th Century_, p.
492.]
The trouble with Rothe in his treatment of this Matter[1] 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.
[Footnote 1: Rothe's _Theologische Ethik_, IVter Band, §§ 1064, 1065.]
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[1]) 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.
[Footnote 1: Nitzsch, the most eminent dogmatic theologian among
Schleiermacher's immediate disciples, denies the possibility of
conceiving of a case where loving consideration for others, or any
other dutiful regard for them, will not attain its end otherwise and
more truly and nobly than by lying to them, or where "the loving liar
or falsifier might not have acted still more lovingly and wisely
without any falsification.... The lie told from supposed necessity or
to serve another is always, even in the most favorable circumstances,
a sign either of a wisdom which is lacking in love and truth, or of a
love which is lacking in wisdom."]
"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.[1] But this does not restrain
Rothe from deliberately advising his fellow-men to a different course.
[Footnote 1: Rothe says on this point: "That the Saviour spoke untruth
is a charge to whose support only a single passage, John 7:8, can be
alleged with any show of plausibility. But even here there was no
speaking of untruth, even if [Greek: ank][a disputed reading] be
regarded as the right reading." See on this passage Meyer in his
_Commentary_, and Westcott in _The Bible Commentary_.]
Rothe names Marheineke, DeWette, von Ammon, Herbart, Hartenstein,
Schwartz, Harless, and Reinhard, as agreeing in the main with his
position; while as opposed to it he mentions Kant, Fichte, Krause,
Schleiermacher, von Hirscher, Nitzsch, Flatt, and Baumgarten-Crusius.
But this is by no means a question to be settled by votes; and not one
of the writers cited by Rothe as of his mind, in this controversy,
has anything new to offer in defense of a position in such radical
disagreement with the teachings of the Bible, and with the moral sense
of the race, on this point, as that taken by Rothe. In his ignoring
of the nature and the will of God as the basis of an argument in this
matter, and in his arbitrary and unauthorized definition of a lie
(with its inclusion of the claim that the deliberate utterance of a
statement known to be false, for the express purpose of deceiving the
one to whom it is spoken, is not necessarily and inevitably a lie),
Rothe stands quite pre-eminent. Wuttke says, indeed, of Rothe's
treatment of ethics: "Morality [as he sees it] is an independent
something alongside of piety, and rests by no means on piety,--is
entirely co-ordinate to and independent of it."[1] Yet so great is the
general influence of Rothe, that various echoes of his arguments for
falsehoods in love are to be found in subsequent English and American
utterances on Christian ethics.
[Footnote 1: Wuttke's _Christian Ethics_ (Lacroix's transl.), § 48.]
Contemporaneous with Richard Rothe, and fully his peer in intellectual
force and Christ-likeness of spirit, stands Isaac August Dorner. Dr.
Schaff says of him:[1] "Dr. Dorner was one of the profoundest and
most learned theologians of the nineteenth century, and ranks with
Schleiermacher, Neander, Nitzsch, Julius Müller, and Richard Rothe. He
mastered the theology of Schleiermacher and the philosophy of Hegel,
appropriated the best elements of both, infused into them a positive
evangelical faith and a historic spirit;" and as a lecturer,
especially "on dogmatics and ethics ... he excelled all his
contemporaries." And to this estimate of him Professor Mead adds:[2]
"Even one who knows Dorner merely as the theological writer, will in
his writings easily detect the fine Christian tone which characterized
the man; but no one who did not personally know him can get a true
impression of the Johannean tenderness and childlike simplicity which
distinguished him above almost any one of equal eminence whom the
world has ever known."
[Footnote 1: _Supplement to Schaff-Hertzog Encyc. of Relig. Knowl_.,
p. 58.]
[Footnote 2: Preface to Dorner's _System of Christian Ethics_ (Am.
ed.), p. vii.]
When, therefore, it is considered that, after Rothe had given his
views on veracity to the world, Dorner wrote on the same subject, as
the very last work of his maturest life, a special interest attaches
to his views on this mooted question. And Dorner is diametrically
opposed to Rothe in this thing. Dorner bases the duty of truthfulness
on our common membership in Christ, and the love that grows out of
such a relation.[1] "Truth does not," indeed, "demand that all that is
in a man should be brought out, else it would be a moral duty for him
to let also the evil that is in him come forth, whereas it is his
duty to keep it down." But if an untrue statement be made with the
intention to deceive, it is a lie.
[Footnote 1: See Dorner's _System of Christian Ethics_ (Am. ed.), pp.
487-492.]