Against Lying 28–41

Hence also that which you mentioned that they say: that the Lord Jesus, after he rose again, walked on the road with two disciples, and when they drew near the village to which they were going, he made as though he would go farther; where the evangelist, saying, "But he made as though he would go farther," even used the very word (finxit) in which liars delight so greatly, so that they may lie with impunity; as if everything that is feigned were a lie, when so many things are feigned truthfully for the sake of signifying one thing by another. If, then, Jesus had signified nothing else in making as though he would go farther, it would rightly be judged a lie. But if it is rightly understood and related to what he wished to signify, it is found to be a mystery. Otherwise all things will be lies that are narrated as done, though they were not done, because of some likeness to things to be signified. Hence that long narrative about the two sons of one man, the elder, who stayed with his father, and the younger, who traveled far away. In this kind of feigning men have even attributed human words or deeds to irrational animals and to things lacking sense, so that by such feigned narratives, but truthful significations, they might convey more persuasively what they wished. And not only among the authors of secular literature, as in Horace, where a mouse speaks to a mouse and a weasel to a little fox, so that through a feigned narrative a truthful signification is related to the matter in hand; hence no one was ever so uneducated as to think that the fables of Aesop, related to that end, should be called lies. But in the sacred writings too, as in the book of Judges, the trees seek a king for themselves and speak to the olive, the fig, the vine, and the bramble. All of this is certainly feigned, so that one may come to the matter intended by a narrative that is indeed feigned, yet with a signification not lying but truthful. I have said this because of what is written of Jesus, "And he made as though he would go farther," lest anyone, wanting to hold lying lawful, as the Priscillianists do, should on the strength of this word go further and contend that Christ lied. But whoever wishes to understand what he prefigured by feigning, let him attend to what he accomplished by acting. For afterward, going farther, above all the heavens, he nevertheless did not desert his disciples. To signify this future thing done divinely, that present thing was feigned humanly. And so a truthful signification went before in that feigning, because in this going the truth of that signification followed. Let him, then, contend that Christ lied by feigning, who denies that he fulfilled by doing what he signified.

Since, then, the lying heretics do not find examples of lying to imitate in the writings of the new testament, they think themselves very well supplied in this dispute, in which they hold that one should lie, when from the old prophetic books, because it is not apparent there, except to the few who understand, to what the signifying sayings and deeds, which are truthful, are related, they seem to themselves to find and bring forward many lies. But wishing to have examples of deceiving to imitate, to protect themselves, they deceive themselves, and their iniquity lies to itself. As for those persons whom we must not believe to have meant to prophesy there, if they feigned anything by doing or saying it with the will to deceive, then, although something prophetic may be carved out even from their deeds, apart from their words, sown beforehand and arranged by the omnipotence of him who knows how to make good use even of the evils of men, yet, as far as they themselves are concerned, they without doubt lied. But they ought not to be thought fit to be imitated because they are found in those books that are rightly called holy and divine. For these contain in writing both the evil and the good deeds of men, the former to be avoided, the latter to be followed; and some are set down in such a way that a judgment is also pronounced on them, while others are left there without an expressed judgment for us to judge, since it was fitting that we should not only be nourished by what is plain but also exercised by what is obscure.

But why do these people think that Tamar lying is to be imitated, and do not think that Judah committing sexual immorality is to be imitated? For they read both there, and that scripture neither blamed nor praised either of them, but only narrated both and left both to our judgment; but it would be strange if it allowed either of them to be imitated with impunity. For we know that Tamar lied not from lust for harlotry but from the wish to conceive. But sexual immorality too, even if Judah's was not of that kind, could be someone's, committed in order that a man might be freed, just as her lie was in order that a man might be conceived. Must one, then, also commit sexual immorality, if for that reason it is thought one should have lied? So not only concerning lying, but concerning all the works of men in which compensating sins, as it were, arise, we must consider what judgment we ought to pronounce, lest we open a way not only to all sorts of small sins but also to all crimes, and no crime, outrage, or sacrilege remains in which a cause could not arise for which it might seem rightly done, and this opinion overturns all uprightness of life.

But one who says that some lies are just must be judged to be saying nothing other than that some sins are just, and therefore that some things are just that are unjust; and what more absurd thing can be said? For why is something a sin, if not because it is contrary to justice? Let it be said, then, that some sins are great and others small, because this is true, and we must not listen to the Stoics, who contend that all are equal; but to say that some sins are unjust and some just, what is it but to say that some iniquities are unjust and some just? Whereas the apostle John says: "Everyone who commits sin commits iniquity; sin is iniquity." A sin, then, cannot be just, except when we apply the name of sin to something else in which a person does not sin, but either does or suffers something on account of sin. For sacrifices for sins have been called sins, and the punishments of sins are sometimes called sins. These can plainly be understood as just sins, since sacrifices or punishments are called just. But the things that are done against the law of God cannot be just. And it has been said to God, "Your law is truth"; and so what is against the truth cannot be just. But who doubts that every lie is against the truth? No lie, therefore, can be just. Likewise, to whom is it not clear that everything that is just is from the truth? And John cries out: "No lie is of the truth." No lie, therefore, is just. Wherefore, when examples of lying are put before us from the holy Scriptures, either they are not lies but are thought to be, while they are not understood; or, if they are lies, they are not to be imitated, because they cannot be just.

But when it is written that God dealt well with the Hebrew midwives and with Rahab, the harlot of Jericho, this was not done because they lied, but because they were merciful toward the men of God. So what was rewarded in them was not the deceit but the kindness, the goodness of mind, not the iniquity of one lying. For just as it would not be strange or absurd if God chose to pardon some evil works committed by them at an earlier time on account of later good works, so it is not to be wondered at that God, seeing both at one time in one case, that is, the deed done mercifully and the deed done deceitfully, both rewarded the good and, on account of this good, pardoned that evil. For if sins that are committed from the lust of the flesh, not from mercy, are forgiven on account of later works of mercy, why should not sins committed from mercy itself be forgiven by the merit of mercy? For a sin committed with the intention of harming is graver than one committed with the intention of helping. And so, if the former is blotted out by a work of mercy following afterward, why should not this, which is lighter, be blotted out by the man's mercy itself, both preceding, so that he sins, and accompanying him while he sins? So indeed it may seem. But it is one thing to say, "I ought not to have sinned, but I will do works of mercy by which to blot out what I sinned before," and another thing to say, "I ought to sin, because I cannot otherwise show mercy"; it is one thing, I say, to say, "Since we have already sinned, let us do good," and another to say, "Let us sin, in order to do good." There it is said, "Let us do good things, because we have done evil things"; but here, "Let us do evil things, that good things may come." And so there the bilge of sin must be pumped out; here the doctrine of sinning must be guarded against.

It remains, then, that we understand that to those women, whether in Egypt or in Jericho, a reward was given for their humanity and mercy, a temporal one certainly, which nevertheless itself, even without their knowing it, prefigured something eternal by prophetic signification. But whether one should ever lie, even for anyone's safety, since it is a question in resolving which even the most learned grow weary, was far beyond the measure of those poor women, placed among those peoples and accustomed to those ways. So the patience of God bore with this ignorance of theirs, as with that of other things of which they were equally ignorant, but which are to be known by the children not of this age but of the age to come; yet he rendered them, for the human kindness they had shown to his servants, earthly rewards, though signifying something heavenly. And Rahab, delivered from Jericho, passed over into the people of God, where, making progress, she could attain to eternal and immortal gifts, which are to be sought by no lie. Yet at the time when she performed for the Israelite spies that good work, praiseworthy for her condition of life, she was not yet such that it could be required of her, "Let there be in your mouth yes, yes; no, no." As for those midwives, though Hebrews, if they had a mind only for the things of the flesh, what or how great is the profit that the temporal reward brought them, that they made houses for themselves, unless by making progress they came to belong to that house of which it is sung to God: "Blessed are those who dwell in your house; they will praise you for ever and ever"? But it must be admitted that the mind comes very near to righteousness, and, though not yet in reality, is already to be praised for its hope and disposition, which never lies except with this intention, that it wishes to benefit someone and to harm no one. But when we ask whether it belongs to a good man ever to lie, we are not asking about a man who still belongs to Egypt or to Jericho or to Babylon, or even still to the earthly Jerusalem itself, which is in slavery with her children, but about a citizen of that city which is above, free, our mother, eternal in the heavens. And to us who ask the answer is given: "No lie is of the truth." The children of that city are surely children of the truth; of that city are the children of whom it is written that in their mouth no lie was found; of that city is the son of whom it is likewise written: "A son who receives the word will be far from destruction; and receiving, he has received it for himself, and nothing false proceeds from his mouth." If ever, as men, any kind of lie creeps upon these children of the Jerusalem on high and of the holy eternal city, they humbly ask for pardon; they do not seek glory from it besides.

But someone will say: "Would those midwives and Rahab, then, have done better if they had shown no mercy by refusing to lie?" On the contrary: those Hebrew women, if they had been such as those about whom we are asking whether they should ever lie, would both have said nothing false and would most freely have refused the foul service of killing the little ones. "But," you will say, "they themselves would have died." But see what follows. They would have died with the reward of a heavenly dwelling, incomparably greater than those houses that they made for themselves on earth could be; they would have died to enter eternal happiness, having suffered death for the most innocent truth. What of the woman in Jericho? Could she have done this? If she had not deceived the citizens who were searching by lying, would she not have betrayed the hidden guests by telling the truth? Or could she have said to those who questioned her, "I know where they are, but I fear God; I will not betray them"? She could indeed have said this if she had already been a true Israelite, in whom there was no guile, which she was to become by passing, through the mercy of God, into the city of God. "But," you will say, "on hearing this they would have killed her and searched the house." But did it follow that they would also have found those whom she had carefully hidden? For the most cautious woman had foreseen this and had put them where they could have lain hidden even if she had not been believed when lying. So she too, if she had indeed been killed by her fellow citizens for a work of mercy, would have ended this life of grass by a death precious in the sight of the Lord, and her kindness toward them would not have been in vain. "But what," you will say, "if those who were searching for them had, by searching everything, come even to the place where she had hidden them?" In the same way it can be said: what if they had refused to believe a most base and shameful woman, not only lying but even swearing falsely? Surely even so the things would have followed that she lied for fear of. And where do we put the will and power of God? Or could he perhaps not guard both her, neither lying to her fellow citizens nor betraying the men of God, and those men of his, from all harm? For by him by whom they were guarded even after the woman's lie, they could certainly have been guarded even if she had not lied. Unless perhaps we have forgotten that this was done in Sodom, where males burning with abominable lust for males could not even find the door of the house in which were those they sought, when a righteous man, in a quite similar case, would not lie for his guests, whom he did not know to be angels, and whom he feared might suffer violence worse than death. And certainly he could have given those who sought them such answers as that woman in Jericho gave; for they too asked their questions in quite the same way. But the righteous man would not have his soul stained by his own lie for the bodies of his guests, for whom he was willing to have the bodies of his daughters suffer violence through the iniquity of another's lust. Let a person, then, do what he can even for the temporal safety of men; but when it has come to the point where he cannot provide for such safety except by sinning, let him then consider that he has nothing to do, when he sees that what remains is something he cannot do rightly. Accordingly, let Rahab of Jericho be praised as one to be imitated even by the citizens of the Jerusalem above, because she received the strangers, men of God, into her house as guests, because she put herself in danger in receiving them, because she believed in their God, because she carefully hid them where she could, because she gave them most faithful advice to return by another way. But that she lied, even if something prophetic is intelligently explained there, is nevertheless not wisely proposed for imitation, although God memorably honored those good things and mercifully pardoned this evil.

Since these things are so, because it would take too long to treat all the things set down in that Pound of Dictinius as examples of lying to be imitated, it seems to me that not only these, but any others of the kind there may be, should be brought under this rule: either it should be shown that what is believed to be a lie is not a lie (whether where the truth is kept silent and no falsehood is said, or where a truthful signification wishes one thing to be understood from another, a kind of figurative sayings or deeds that abounds in the prophetic writings); or it should be shown that those which are proved to be lies are not to be imitated, and that if any creep upon us like other sins, justice is not to be ascribed to them but pardon is to be asked. This is indeed how it seems to me; and what has been argued above compels me to this view.

But because we are men and live among men (and I confess that I am not yet among those whom compensating sins do not disturb), human feeling often overcomes me in human affairs, and I cannot resist when it is said to me: "Look, a sick man is in danger from a grave illness, and his strength can no longer bear it if he is told that his only and dearest son has died. He asks you whether the son is alive whom you know has ended his life. What will you answer, when, whatever else you say except one of three things, 'He is dead,' or 'He is alive,' or 'I do not know,' he believes nothing but that he is dead, because he perceives that you fear to say it and do not wish to lie? It comes to the same even if you keep completely silent. Of those three, two are false, 'He is alive' and 'I do not know,' and you cannot say them except by lying. But if you say the one true thing, that he is dead, and the death of the distressed man follows, it will be cried out that he was killed by you." And who can bear people exaggerating how great an evil it is to avoid a healthful lie and to love a murderous truth? I am strongly moved by these objections, but it would be a wonder if wisely too. For when I set before the eyes of my heart, such as they are, the intelligible beauty of him from whose mouth nothing false proceeds, then, although where truth, beaming, shines out more and more, there my trembling weakness is beaten back, yet I am so kindled by love of such great beauty that I despise all human things that call me back from it. But it is a great thing for this affection to persevere so far that its effect does not fail in temptation. Nor, as I contemplate the luminous good in which there is no darkness of a lie, am I moved by the fact that, when we are unwilling to lie and men die on hearing the truth, truth is called a murderer. For if an unchaste woman seeks sexual immorality and, when you do not consent, dies disturbed by savage love, will chastity too be a murderer? Or, because we read, "We are the good aroma of Christ in every place, both among those who are being saved and among those who are perishing; to some an aroma of life unto life, to others an aroma of death unto death," shall we pronounce even the aroma of Christ a murderer? But because we are men, and in questions and contradictions of this kind human feeling mostly overcomes or wearies us, the apostle therefore added at once: "And who is sufficient for these things?"

Add to this (and here there is cause for more pitiable lamentation) that if we grant that one should have lied about his son's life for the sake of that sick man's health, this evil grows up little by little and bit by bit, and by short approaches, creeping in gradually, is brought to such a heap of wicked lies that no point can ever be found at all where so great a plague, growing strong beyond measure by tiny additions, can be resisted. Hence it is most providently written: "He who despises small things falls little by little." What of the fact that such lovers of this life, who do not hesitate to put it before truth, want us, so that a man may not die, or rather so that a man who will die some day may die a little later, not only to lie but even to swear falsely? So that, namely, lest the vain health of a man pass away a little sooner, we take the name of the Lord our God in vain. And there are learned men among them who even fix rules and set limits for when one should, and when one should not, swear falsely. O where are you, fountains of tears? And what shall we do? Where shall we go? Where shall we hide ourselves from the wrath of truth, if we not only neglect to guard against lies but dare, besides, to teach perjuries? Let the champions and defenders of lying see what kind or kinds of lying they like to justify: at least in the worship of God let them grant that one must not lie; at least let them keep themselves from perjuries and blasphemies; at least where God's name, where God as witness, where an oath by God is interposed, where speech is uttered or exchanged about divine religion, let no one lie, let no one praise, let no one teach and prescribe, let no one call a lie just. Of the other kinds of lies, let him who thinks one should lie choose for himself what he considers the mildest and most innocent kind of lying. This I know, that even one who teaches that one ought to lie wishes to seem to teach the truth. For if what he teaches is false, who would want to study a false teaching, in which the teacher deceives and the learner is deceived? But if, in order to find some pupil, he asserts that he teaches the truth when he teaches that one should lie, how will that lie be of the truth, when the apostle John cries out against it, "No lie is of the truth"? It is not true, then, that one should sometimes lie; and what is not true is to be urged on no one at all.

But weakness plays its part, and proclaims, with the crowds applauding, that it has an unbeatable case, when it objects and says: "How are people in danger to be helped among men who, if they are deceived, are without doubt turned away from ruin, whether of another or of their own, if human feeling does not incline us to lie?" If the crowd of mortality, the crowd of weakness, will hear me patiently, I will answer something on behalf of the cause of truth. Certainly devout, true, holy chastity is only from the truth; and whoever acts against it certainly acts against the truth. Why then, if people in danger cannot be helped otherwise, do I not commit sexual immorality, which is contrary to truth because it is contrary to chastity, and yet, so that people in danger may be helped, I speak a lie, which is most plainly contrary to truth itself? How has chastity deserved so much from us, and how has truth offended us? For all chastity is from the truth, and truth is the chastity not of the body but of the mind, and in the mind dwells even the chastity of the body. Finally, as I said a little earlier and say again, whoever contradicts me in order to urge and defend any lie, what does he say, if he does not say what is true? But if he is to be listened to because he says what is true, how does he want to make me a liar by saying what is true? How does a lie bring in truth as its patron? Does truth conquer for its adversary so as to be conquered by itself? Who would bear this absurdity? We shall by no means say, then, that those who assert that one should sometimes lie are truthful in asserting it, lest, what is most absurd and foolish to believe, the truth should teach us to be liars. For what sort of thing is it, that no one learns from chastity that one should commit adultery, no one learns from godliness that one should offend God, no one learns from kindness that one should harm anyone, and we should learn from truth that one should lie? Furthermore, if truth does not teach this, it is not true; if it is not true, it is not to be learned; if it is not to be learned, then one must never lie.

"But solid food," someone says, "belongs to the perfect. For many things are allowed to weakness by way of pardon, although they by no means please the most sincere truth." Let him say this who does not fear the consequences that are to be feared if some lies are in some way permitted. Yet they must by no means be permitted to climb so high as to reach perjuries and blasphemies; nor should any cause at all be put forward why one should swear falsely or, what is more execrable, why God should be blasphemed. For it is not the case that because he is blasphemed by a lie, he is therefore not blasphemed. In that way it could be said that there is no false swearing, because false swearing is done by a lie. For who could be a perjurer by the truth? So too no one can be a blasphemer by the truth. Certainly one who swears falsely more mildly is one who does not know it is false and thinks what he swears is true; just as Saul too blasphemed more excusably, because he did it ignorantly. But it is worse to blaspheme than to swear falsely, because in swearing falsely God is brought in as witness to a false thing, but in blaspheming false things are said about God himself. And each one, whether perjurer or blasphemer, is the more inexcusable the more they know or believe the things they assert in swearing falsely or blaspheming to be false. So whoever says that one should lie for the temporal safety or life of a man in danger strays far indeed from the road of eternal salvation and life, if he says that in such a case one should even swear by God, or even blaspheme God.

But sometimes the danger even to eternal salvation itself is set against us, which, it is cried out, must be driven off by our lie if it cannot be otherwise: as if someone who is to be baptized were held in the power of the ungodly and unbelievers, and could not be reached so as to be washed with the washing of regeneration except by deceiving his guards with lies. From this most invidious outcry, by which we are forced to lie not for anyone's wealth or honors passing away in this world, nor for the life of this time itself, but for a man's eternal salvation, where shall I flee but to you, O Truth? And chastity is set before me by you. For if those guards could be enticed by sexual immorality to admit us to baptize the man, why do we not do what is contrary to chastity, and yet, if they can be deceived by a lie, we do what is contrary to truth? Whereas without doubt chastity would be faithfully lovable to no one if truth did not command it. Accordingly, so that the man to be baptized may be reached, let the guards be deceived by lying, if truth commands this. But how would truth command that one should lie so that a man may be baptized, if chastity does not command that one should commit adultery so that a man may be baptized? And why does chastity not command this, except because truth does not teach it? If, then, we ought to do nothing but what truth teaches, since truth teaches that we must not do what is contrary to chastity even for the sake of a man to be baptized, how will it teach us to do, for the sake of a man to be baptized, what is contrary to truth itself? But just as eyes too weak to look at the sun nevertheless gladly look at the things lit by the sun, so souls that are already able to delight in the beauty of chastity are not yet able straightway to contemplate in itself the truth from which chastity shines; so that when it comes to doing something that is against truth, they do not shrink from it and shudder at it as they shrink and shudder if something is proposed to be done that is against chastity. But that son who, receiving the word, will be far from destruction, and from whose mouth nothing false proceeds, considers the way as closed to him if he is forced to pass through a lie to help a man as if through sexual immorality. And the Father hears him when he prays that he may be able to help without a lie the one whom the Father himself, whose judgments are unsearchable, wills to be helped. Such a son, then, keeps himself from a lie as from sin. For sometimes the name of a lie is even put for the name of sin. Hence that saying, "Every man is a liar"; for it is said as if it were said, "Every man is a sinner." And that: "But if the truth of God has abounded through my lie." And so, when he lies as a man, he sins as a man, and will be held by that sentence by which it was said, "Every man is a liar," and, "If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us." But when nothing false proceeds from his mouth, it will be so according to that grace of which it was said, "He who is born of God does not sin." For if this birth alone were in us, no one would sin; and when it alone is, no one will sin. But now we still carry what we were born corruptible, although according to what we have been reborn, if we walk well, we are renewed inwardly from day to day. But when this corruptible has put on incorruption, life will swallow up the whole, and no sting of death will remain; and the sting of death is sin.

Either, then, lies are to be avoided by acting rightly or confessed by repenting; but they are not, when they abound through our living unhappily, to be increased by teaching them as well. But let whoever thinks otherwise choose what lies of whatever kind he will, to help a man in danger toward whatever safety, provided that even with such people we obtain this: that for no cause ought we to be led to perjury and blasphemy. Let us at least judge these crimes either greater than acts of sexual immorality or certainly not less. For we must bear in mind that very often men who suspect their wives of adultery challenge them to take an oath: which they surely would not do unless they believed that even women who did not fear to commit adultery could fear perjury; because in fact some unchaste women, who did not fear to deceive their husbands by unlawful intercourse, feared to call God falsely as witness to those same husbands whom they had deceived. What reason is there, then, that a chaste and religious man should be unwilling to help a man to be baptized by adultery, and willing to do so by perjury, which even adulterers are wont to dread? Furthermore, if it is wicked to do this by swearing falsely, how much more by blaspheming! Far be it, then, that a Christian should deny and blaspheme Christ in order to make another a Christian, and, by perishing, seek someone to be found whom, if he teaches him such things, he will lose once found. So you ought to refute and destroy the book called the Pound in such a way that you know that that chief article, in which they teach that one should lie for the sake of concealing religion, must first be cut off; so that you show that the testimonies by which they try to bring in the holy books as patrons of their lies are partly not lies, and partly, even those that are, not to be imitated; and that, if weakness claims so much for itself that something which truth disapproves is permitted it as pardonable, you nevertheless hold unshaken and defend that in divine religion one must never lie at all; and that hidden heretics are no more to be sought out by lies, or blasphemers by blasphemies, than adulterers by adulteries, murderers by murders, or sorcerers by sorcery, according to all that we have argued at such length in this volume that we have barely reached its end, which we have fixed at this point.