Against Lying 18–27

It does indeed make a very great difference for what cause, to what end, with what intention something is done; but things that are agreed to be sins are not to be done under the pretext of any good cause, for any supposedly good end, with any seemingly good intention. For those works of men which are not sins in themselves are now good, now evil, according as they have good or evil causes: as giving food to the poor is a good work if it is done for the sake of mercy with right faith; as conjugal intercourse is, since it is done for the sake of begetting, if it is done in the faith that children may be begotten to be born again. These and similar works are good or evil according to their causes, because these same works, if they have evil causes, are turned into sins: as when a poor man is fed for the sake of boasting, or a man lies with his wife for the sake of wantonness, or children are begotten to be brought up not for God but for the devil. But when the works themselves are already sins, such as thefts, acts of sexual immorality, blasphemies, and the like, who is there who would say that they are to be done for good causes, so that either they are not sins or, what is more absurd, they are just sins? Who is there who would say: "So that we may have something to give to the poor, let us commit thefts from the rich or sell false testimony, especially if innocent people are not harmed by it, but rather guilty people are rescued from judges who would condemn them"? For two goods are done by the sale of this lie: money is obtained with which a needy person may be fed, and the judge is deceived so that a man is not punished. Wills too, if we can, why do we not suppress the true ones and substitute false ones, so that unworthy people who do no good with them may not have inheritances or legacies, but rather those by whom the hungry are fed, the naked clothed, strangers received, captives redeemed, churches built? For why should those evils not be done for the sake of these goods, if for the sake of these goods those are not evils? And now, if some unclean and rich women seem likely to enrich their lovers and seducers besides, why should not a merciful man also take up these roles and arts, to use them for so good a cause, so as to have something to give to the needy, and not listen to the apostle who says, "Let him who stole steal no longer, but rather let him labor, working with his hands what is good, so that he may have something to give to him who has need"? Since not only theft itself, but also false testimony and adultery and every evil work, will not be evil but good, if it is committed so that there may be something with which good is done. Who would say this except one who is trying to overturn human affairs and all morals and laws? For what most wicked crime, what most shameful outrage, what most ungodly sacrilege could not be said to be done rightly and justly, and not only with impunity but even gloriously, so that in committing it not only are no punishments feared but even rewards are hoped for, if we once grant that in all the evil works of men we must ask not what is done but why it is done, so that whatever are found done for good causes are not themselves judged to be evil? But if justice rightly punishes a thief, even one who says and shows that he took away a rich man's superfluities in order to provide necessities for the poor; if it rightly punishes a forger, even one who shows that he corrupted another's will so that the heir would be one who was going to give large alms from it, not one who would give none; if it rightly punishes an adulterer, even one who demonstrates that he committed adultery out of mercy, in order to free a man from death through the woman with whom he committed it; finally, to come nearer to the matter in question, if it rightly punishes one who had adulterous intercourse with some woman of the Priscillianists who knew of their shamefulness in order to reach their hiding places: I beg you, since the apostle says, "Do not present your members to sin as weapons of iniquity," and so we ought not to present either our hands or the genital members of the body or other members to shameful deeds in order to find Priscillianists, what has our tongue, what has our whole mouth, what has the organ of the voice done to offend, that we should present these as weapons to sin, and to so great a sin, in which, in order to rescue captured Priscillianists from the blasphemies of ignorance, we blaspheme our God without the excuse of ignorance?

Someone will say: "Then is any thief whatever to be put on a level with a thief who steals out of a wish to be merciful?" Who would say this? But of these two neither is good because one is worse. For he who steals from covetousness is worse than he who steals from pity; but if all theft is sin, one must abstain from all theft. For who would say that one should sin, even if one sin is damnable and another venial? But now we are asking, if someone does this or that, who will not sin or will sin, not who will sin more gravely or more lightly. For thefts themselves are certainly punished more lightly by the law than acts of sexual immorality; yet both are sins, though some are lighter and some graver, so that a theft committed from covetousness is held lighter than an act of sexual immorality committed to give help. For within their own kind, sins that seem to be committed with a good intention become lighter than other sins of the same kind, while nevertheless they are found to be graver than sins of another kind that are lighter by their very kind. For it is graver to commit theft from avarice than from mercy, and likewise graver to commit sexual immorality from lust than from mercy; and yet it is graver to commit adultery from mercy than to steal from avarice. But the question now is not what is lighter or graver, but what are sins and what are not. For no one would say that one ought to have sinned where it is agreed that it is a sin; but we say that, if it was a sin in this way or that, it ought or ought not to be pardoned.

But, it must be admitted, certain compensating sins so disturb human minds that they are even thought to deserve praise, and are rather called right actions. For who would doubt that it is a great sin if a father prostitutes his daughters to the sexual immorality of the ungodly? And yet a case arose in which a righteous man thought he ought to do this, when the Sodomites were rushing upon his guests with an abominable onset of lust. For he says: "I have two daughters who have not known a man; I will bring them out to you, and use them as you please; only do no wrong to these men, because they have come under the shelter of my roof." What shall we say here? Do we not so abhor that crime which the Sodomites were trying to commit against that righteous man's guests that we judge that whatever might be done to prevent it should have been done? The person of the one who did it also weighs very heavily, since he was delivered from Sodom on account of the merit of his righteousness; so that, since it is a lesser evil for women than for men to suffer sexual violation, it might be said that this too belonged to the righteousness of that righteous man, that he preferred it to be done to his daughters rather than to his guests, not only willing it in his mind but also offering it in words, and ready to carry it out in deed if they had agreed. But if we open this way to sins, that we commit lesser ones so that others may not commit greater, then with a wide boundary, or rather with no boundary, but with all limits torn up and removed, all sins will enter and reign over an infinite space. For once it has been defined that a man should sin less so that another may not sin more, surely others' acts of sexual immorality will be prevented by our thefts, and incest by sexual immorality; and if some ungodliness appears even worse than incest, incest too will be said to be something we should commit, if it could be brought about in that way that the ungodliness is not committed by others. And in each several kind of sins, thefts will be thought fit to be done for thefts, sexual immorality for sexual immorality, incest for incest, sacrilege for sacrilege, ours for others', not only lesser for greater but, if it comes to the very highest and worst, fewer for more, if the course of events should so turn that others will not otherwise abstain from sins unless we sin, somewhat less, but sinning nonetheless; so that, whenever an enemy who had such power said, "Unless you are wicked, I will be more wicked," or, "Unless you commit this crime, I will commit more such crimes," we would seem to commit a crime if we chose to refrain from crime. What is it to be wise in this way, but to be foolish, or rather to be mad? For it is from my own iniquity, not from another's, whether committed against me or against others, that I must guard myself against condemnation; for "the soul that sins, it shall die."

If, then, we certainly ought not to sin so that others may not sin more gravely, whether against us or against anyone else, we must consider whether what Lot did is an example that we ought to imitate or rather one we ought to avoid. For it seems more to be observed and noted that, when so horrible an evil from the most shameful ungodliness of the Sodomites hung over his guests, which he longed to drive off and could not, even a righteous man's mind could be so disturbed that he was willing to do what not the cloudy storm of human fear but the calm serenity of divine law, if we consult it, will cry out is not to be done, and will command us rather to guard against our own sins in such a way that we do not sin through fear of anyone else's sins at all. For that righteous man, fearing others' sins, which cannot defile those who do not consent, was disturbed and did not attend to his own, by which he was willing to subject his daughters to the lusts of the ungodly. When we read these things in the holy Scriptures, we should not, because we believe they were done, also believe they should be done, lest we violate the commandments while we follow examples at random. Or, because David swore that he would kill Nabal and, out of more considered clemency, did not do it, shall we say that he is therefore to be imitated, so that we rashly swear that we will do what we afterward see is not to be done? But just as fear disturbed Lot, so that he was willing to prostitute his daughters, so anger disturbed David, so that he swore rashly. Finally, if it were lawful for us to ask both of them and inquire why they did these things, Lot could answer, "Fear and trembling came upon me, and darkness covered me"; and David could answer, "My eye was troubled because of anger"; so that we would not wonder that the one in the darkness of fear, and the other with his troubled eye, did not see what they should have seen, so as not to do what they should not have done.

And to holy David, indeed, it could more justly have been said that he ought not even to have been angry, though with an ungrateful man who returned evil for good; but even if anger crept upon him as a man, it certainly ought not to have prevailed so far that he swore he would do what he would either do by being cruel or fail to do by perjuring himself. But to Lot, placed amid the lustful madness of the Sodomites, who would dare to say: "Even if your guests, in your house, into which you compelled them to enter by the most urgent hospitality, are seized and overpowered by the lewd and suffer what women suffer, fear nothing, care nothing, do not be dismayed, do not shudder, do not tremble"? Who, even an accomplice of those criminals, would dare to say this to a devout host? But it would quite rightly be said: "Do whatever you can to prevent what you rightly fear, but do not let this fear drive you to do something by which your daughters, if they are willing to have it done to them, will commit wickedness with the Sodomites at your instigation, and if they are unwilling, will suffer violence from the Sodomites at your instigation. Do not commit a great crime of your own while you shudder at a greater crime of someone else's; for however great the distance between yours and another's, this will be yours, that another's." Unless perhaps, in defense of this man, someone forces himself into such straits as to say: "Since it is better to suffer wrong than to do it, and those guests were certainly not going to do wrong but to suffer it, the righteous man preferred that his daughters rather than his guests should suffer wrong, by the right he had as master of his daughters; and he knew that they would not sin if it happened, because they would endure sinners to whom they did not consent, without sin of their own. Finally, they themselves did not offer to be violated in place of those guests, though they were women in place of men, lest not the suffering of another's lust but the consent of their own will should make them guilty. Nor did their father allow this to be done to himself when those to whom he would not betray his guests tried to do it, although it would have been less evil for it to happen to one than to two; but he resisted as far as he could, so that no consent of his own might stain him, whom another's lustful fury, even if it had prevailed by bodily strength, would not have stained if he did not consent. And in the case of his daughters, who would not sin, he did not sin himself, because he was not making them sin, if they were overpowered against their will, but making them endure those who sinned: just as if he offered his own slaves to be beaten by wicked men so that his guests would not suffer the injury of a beating." I will not discuss this point, because it is a long matter, whether a master rightly uses the right of his power over a slave in such a way as to have his innocent slave beaten so that his friend, also innocent, is not beaten in his house by violent wicked men. But certainly David is by no means rightly said to have been obliged to swear that he would do what he afterward saw he ought not to do. From this it is clear that we must not transfer into our conduct all the things we read were done by holy or righteous men, but must also learn from this how widely it extends and to whom it reaches, what the apostle says: "Brothers, even if a man is overtaken in some fault, you who are spiritual, instruct such a one in a spirit of gentleness, looking to yourself, lest you too be tempted." For these are the overtakings in which people fall into fault, when what should be done is either not seen at the moment or, even by one who has seen it, is overcome, so that sin is committed either when the truth is hidden or when weakness compels.

But in all our actions, compensating sins greatly disturb even good people, so that they are not considered sins if they have such causes for which they are done, and in which it seems rather to be a sin if they are not done. And especially concerning lies this opinion has prevailed among men, that those lies are not thought to be sins, but are even believed to be right actions, when someone lies for the benefit of one whom it profits to be deceived, or so that someone who seems likely to harm others may not harm them, unless he is turned aside by lies. Very many examples from the holy Scriptures are thought to support the defense of these kinds of lies. But to hide the truth is not the same as to utter a lie. For although everyone who lies wishes to conceal what is true, not everyone who wishes to conceal what is true lies. For most often we hide true things not by lying but by keeping silent. For the Lord did not lie when he said, "I have many things to say to you, but you cannot bear them now." He kept silent about true things, he did not speak false things; he judged them less fit to hear those truths. But if he had not indicated this very thing to them, namely that they could not bear what he was unwilling to say, he would nonetheless have hidden some truth; but perhaps we would not know that this can rightly be done, or we would not be strengthened by so great an example. Hence those who assert that one must sometimes lie do not fittingly mention that Abraham did so about Sarah, whom he called his sister. For he did not say, "She is not my wife," but he said, "She is my sister," because she was in fact so near to him in kinship that she could be called his sister without a lie. He confirmed this too afterward, when she had been given back to him by the one who had taken her away, answering him and saying, "And indeed she is my sister, by my father, not by my mother," that is, of his father's kindred, not his mother's. So he kept silent about something true; he did not say anything false, when he kept silent about "wife" and said "sister." His son Isaac also did this; for we know that he too had taken a kinswoman as his wife. It is not a lie, then, when the truth is hidden by keeping silent, but when a falsehood is put forward by speaking.

What Jacob did at his mother's prompting, so that he seemed to deceive his father, is, if it is attended to carefully and faithfully, not a lie but a mystery. If we call these things lies, then all parables and figures signifying various things, which are not to be taken literally but in which one thing is to be understood from another, will also be called lies; which God altogether forbid. For whoever thinks this can bring this false charge against all the many figurative expressions too, so that even what is called metaphor, that is, the transfer of some word used from its proper thing to a thing not its own, could by this reasoning be called a lie. For when we say "the crops are waving," "the vines are budding like gems," "flowering youth," "snowy white hair," since without doubt we do not find waves, gems, flowers, or snow in the things to which we have transferred these words from elsewhere, they will be thought lies by these people. And "Christ the rock" and "the stony heart" of the Jews, likewise "Christ the lion" and "the devil the lion," and countless such things, will be called lies. What of the fact that this figurative speech goes as far as what is called antiphrasis, so that what is not there is said to abound, what is sour is called sweet, a grove is called lucus because it has no light (non luceat), the Fates are called Parcae because they do not spare (non parcant)? Hence that expression in the holy Scriptures, "If he does not bless you to your face," which the devil said to the Lord about holy Job, and which is understood as ⟨curse⟩. By this word too the crime falsely charged against Naboth by his accusers was named; for it was said that he had "blessed" the king, that is, cursed him. All these modes of speech will be thought lies if figurative speech or action is counted a lie. But if it is not a lie when things signifying one thing by another are related to the understanding of the truth, then surely not only what Jacob did or said to his father in order to be blessed, but also what Joseph said to his brothers as if mocking them, and David's feigning madness, and other such things, are not to be judged lies, but prophetic sayings and actions to be related to the true things that are to be understood. They are covered as if with figurative garments for this reason, to exercise the mind of the devout seeker, and so that they may not grow cheap by being bare and ready to hand. Even though we have learned them from other places where they are said openly and plainly, when those same things are dug out of hidden places, they are in a way renewed in our knowledge, and being renewed grow sweet. Nor are they grudged to learners because they are obscured in these ways; rather they are commended the more, so that, being withdrawn as it were, they may be desired more ardently and, being desired, found more joyfully. Yet true things, not false, are said, since true things, not false, are signified, whether by word or by deed; for the things signified are surely what is said. They are thought lies because it is not understood that the true things signified are what is said, but it is believed that the false things are what was said. To make this plainer by examples, consider the very thing that Jacob did. He certainly covered his limbs with kid-skins. If we look for the proximate cause, we shall think that he lied; for he did this so that he would be thought to be who he was not. But if this deed is related to that which it was really done to signify, by the kid-skins sins are signified, and by the one who covered himself with them, he is signified who bore not his own sins but those of others. A truthful signification, then, can by no means rightly be called a lie. And as in the deed, so also in the word. For when his father said to him, "Who are you, my son?" he answered, "I am Esau, your firstborn." If this is related to those two twins, it will seem a lie; but if to that which these things were done, said, and written to signify, he is to be understood here in his body, which is his church, who, speaking of this matter, says: "When you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, but yourselves thrust out. And they will come from east and west and north and south, and will recline in the kingdom of God. And behold, those who were first are last, and those who were last are first." For so, in a way, the younger brother took away the primacy of the elder and transferred it to himself. Since, then, things so true are so truthfully signified, what here ought to be thought done or said lyingly? For since the things signified are certainly not nonexistent in truth, but are, whether past or present or future, without doubt it is a true signification and no lie. But it would take too long to search out in detail all the things in this prophetic signification in which truth carries the palm, since as they were foretold by signifying, so they have been made clear by coming to pass.

Nor have I undertaken in this discourse what belongs rather to you, who have opened up the hiding places of the Priscillianists, as far as concerns their false and perverse doctrines, lest they seem to have been investigated as if they were to be taught and not refuted. Make it your aim, rather, that what you have caused to lie open when betrayed should lie defeated, lest, while we wish to succeed in tracking down deceitful men, we allow the falsehoods themselves to remain as if unconquerable; whereas we ought rather to destroy the falsehoods even in the hearts of those who hide than to find the deceivers by sparing the falsehoods. Moreover, among those doctrines of theirs that must be overthrown is certainly this one also that they teach, that religious people ought to lie to conceal their religion, so much so that one must lie not only about other things that do not belong to the teaching of religion, but about religion itself, lest it be disclosed to outsiders; so that, namely, Christ must be denied so that a Christian may lie hidden among his enemies. Overthrow this ungodly and abominable doctrine too, I beg you, in support of which they argue and gather testimonies from the Scriptures by which lies may seem not only pardonable or tolerable but even honorable. It is your task, then, in refuting a detestable sect, to show how these testimonies of the Scriptures are to be taken: either teaching that what are thought to be lies are not lies, if they are understood as they should be understood; or that even things that are plainly lies are not to be imitated; or at least, as a last resort, that in matters that belong to the teaching of religion one must by no means lie. For so they are truly overthrown from the foundation, when their hiding place is overthrown, so that by the very fact that they profess to be liars in order to conceal their heresy they are judged least of all to be followed and most of all to be guarded against. This is what must first be attacked in them; this, as it were their fitting stronghold, must be struck and thrown down by the blows of truth. Nor must we provide them with another hiding place, which they did not have, to flee to, so that if perhaps they are betrayed by those whom they tried to seduce and could not, they may say: "We wanted to test them, because wise catholics have taught us that this should be done in order to find heretics." But I must say a little more persuasively why this threefold method of argument seems to me the right one against those who want to bring in the divine Scriptures as patrons of their lies: first, that we show that some things there thought to be lies are not what they are thought, if rightly understood; then, that if any lies there are plain, they are not to be imitated; third, that against all the opinions of all who think that it belongs to a good man's duty sometimes to lie, it must by all means be held that in the teaching of religion one must by no means lie. For these three things I commended to you a little earlier as things to carry out, and in a way enjoined them on you.

To show, then, that some things thought to be lies in the Scriptures are not what they are thought, if rightly understood, let it not seem to you of little weight against these people that they find their supposed examples of lying not in the apostolic but in the prophetic writings. For all the things they mention by name, where someone lied, are read in those books in which not only many sayings but also many deeds were written figuratively, because they were also done figuratively. And in figures what is said to be like a lie is found, when rightly understood, to be true. But the apostles spoke in their letters otherwise, and the Acts of the Apostles were written otherwise, now that the new testament had been revealed, which was veiled in those prophetic figures. Finally, in so many apostolic letters and in the very great book itself in which their acts are narrated with canonical truth, no one is found lying in such a way that he could be put forward by these people as an example to license lying; since that pretense of Peter and Barnabas, by which they were compelling the gentiles to live like Jews, was rightly rebuked and corrected, both so that it would not do harm then and so that it would have no force for later generations to imitate. For when the apostle Paul saw that they were not walking rightly toward the truth of the gospel, he said to Peter before them all: "If you, though you are a Jew, live like a gentile and not like a Jew, how can you compel the gentiles to live like Jews?" But as for what he himself did, in keeping and practicing certain observances of the law according to Jewish custom so as to show that he was not an enemy of the law and the prophets, far be it from us to believe that he did it lyingly. For on this matter his known judgment is enough, by which it had been determined that the Jews who then believed in Christ were not to be forbidden their ancestral traditions, nor were the gentiles, when they became Christians, to be compelled to them; so that those sacraments, which were agreed to have been commanded by God, should not be shunned like sacrileges, and yet should not be thought so necessary, now that the new testament was revealed, as if without them no one who turned to God could be saved. For there were some who thought and preached this, even after the gospel of Christ had been received; and Peter and Barnabas had feignedly agreed with them, and so were compelling the gentiles to live like Jews. For this is what compelling was: to preach those things as so necessary that, even after the gospel had been received, there was no salvation in Christ without them. This the error of certain people thought, this Peter's fear feigned, this Paul's freedom rebuked. So when he says, "I became all things to all, that I might win all," he did it by compassion, not by lying. For a person becomes like the one he wishes to help when he helps with as much mercy as he would wish to be helped with himself if he were placed in the same misery. So he becomes like that person, not because he deceives him, but because he thinks of himself as that person. Hence that saying of the same apostle which I have already mentioned above: "Brothers, if a man is overtaken in some fault, you who are spiritual, instruct such a one in a spirit of gentleness, looking to yourself, lest you too be tempted." For if, because he said, "To the Jews I became as a Jew, and to those under the law as under the law," he is on that account to be thought to have taken up the sacraments of the old law lyingly, he ought also to have taken up the idolatry of the gentiles in the same lying way, since he also said that to those without law he became as without law, that he might win them; which he certainly did not do. For he nowhere sacrificed to idols or worshipped those figments, but rather, freely, as a martyr of Christ, showed that they were to be detested and avoided. So from no acts or words of the apostles do these people bring forward examples of lying to imitate. They think they have something to bring forward from prophetic deeds or sayings for this reason, that they think figures that foretell are lies, because they are sometimes like lies. But when they are related to the things for signifying which they were so done or said, they are found to be truthful significations, and therefore by no means lies. For a lie is a false signification with the will to deceive. But there is no false signification where, although one thing is signified by another, what is signified is nevertheless true, if it is rightly understood.

There are some things of this kind also of the Savior in the gospel, because the Lord of the prophets himself also deigned to be a prophet. Such are those places where he says of the woman who suffered a flow of blood, "Who touched me?" and of Lazarus, "Where have you laid him?" For he asked as though not knowing what he certainly knew. And so he feigned not to know, so that that apparent ignorance of his might signify something else. And since that signification was truthful, it was certainly not a lie. For both the woman suffering the flow of blood and the man four days dead signified those whom even he who knew all things in a certain way did not know. For she bore the figure of the people of the gentiles, about whom the prophecy had gone before, "A people whom I have not known has served me"; and Lazarus, removed from the living, lay, by a signifying likeness, as it were there where he lies whose voice is: "I am cast out from the sight of your eyes." And so, as though Christ did not know who she was or where he had been laid, it was figured by the words of one asking, and every lie was avoided by a truthful signification.