A Lie Never Justifiable Part 7

"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 G.o.d 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 pa.s.sionately excited, and the morally weak,"--and that takes in a large share of the human race. He gives many ill.u.s.trations 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 n.o.bly 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 circ.u.mstances, 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 a.s.sumption." 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 pa.s.sage, 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 pa.s.sage 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 G.o.d 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 Muller, 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.]

"Are there cases," he asks, "where lying is allowable? Can we make out the so-called 'white lie' to be morally permissible?" Then he takes up the cases of children and the insane, who are not ent.i.tled to know all the truth, and asks if it be right not only to conceal the truth but to falsify it, in talking with them. Concealment may be a duty, he admits, but he denies that falsifying is ever a duty. "How shall ethics ever be brought to lay down a duty of lying [of 'white lying'], to recommend evil that good may come? The test for us is, whether we could ever imagine Christ acting in this way, either for the sake of others, or--which would be quite as justifiable, since self-love is a moral duty--for his _own_ sake."

As to falsifying to a sick or dying man, he says, "we overestimate the value of human life, and, besides, we in a measure usurp the place of Providence, when we believe we may save it by committing sin." In other words, Dorner counts falsifying with the intention of deceiving, even with the best of motives, a lie, and therefore a sin--never justifiable. Like Augustine, Dorner recognizes degrees of guilt in lies, according to the spirit and motive of their telling; but in any event, if there be falsehood with the purpose of deceiving, it is a sin--to be regretted and repented of.

Dorner makes a fresh distinction between the stratagems of war and lying, which is worthy of note. He says that playful fictions, after the manner of riddles to be guessed out, are clearly allowable. So "in war, too, something like a game of this kind is carried on, when by way of stratagem some deceptive appearance is produced, and a riddle is thus given to the enemy. In such cases there is no falsehood; for from the conditions of the situation,--whether friendly or hostile,--the appearance that is given is confessedly nothing more than an appearance, and is therefore honest."

The simplicity and clearness of Dorner, in his unsophistical treatment of this question, is in refreshing contrast with the course of Rothe,--who confuses the whole matter in discussion by his arbitrary claim that a lie is not a lie, if it be told with a good purpose and a loving spirit. And the two men are representative disputants in this controversy of the centuries, as truly as were Augustine and Chrysostom.

A close friend of Dorner was Hans La.s.sen Martensen, "the greatest theologian of Denmark," and a thinker of the first cla.s.s, "with high speculative endowments, and a considerable tincture of theosophical mysticism."[1] Martensen's "Christian Ethics" do not ignore G.o.d and the Bible as factors in any question of practical morals under discussion. He characterizes the result of such an omission as "a reckoning of an account whose balance has been struck elsewhere; if we bring out another figure, we have reckoned wrong." Martensen's treatment of the duty of veracity is a remarkable exhibit of the workings of a logical mind in full view of eternal principles, yet measurably hindered and r.e.t.a.r.ded by the heart-drawings of an amiable sentiment. He sees the all-dividing line, and recognizes the primal duty of conforming to it; yet he feels that it is a pity that such conformity must be so expensive in certain imaginary cases, and he longs to find some allowance for desirable exceptions.[2]

[Footnote 1: See Kurtz's _Church History_ (Macpherson's transl.), III., 201; _Supplement to Schaff-Hertzog Encyc. of Relig. Knowl_., p.

57; _Johnson's Univ. Cycl._., art. "Martensen."]

[Footnote 2: Martensen's _Christian Ethics (Individual)_, (Eng.

trans.,) pp. 205-226.]

Martensen gives as large prominence as Rothe to love for one's fellow-man; but he bases that love entirely, as Rothe does not, on love for Christ. "Only in Christ, and [in] the light which, proceeding from him, is poured over human nature and all human life, can we love men in the central sense, and only then does philanthropy receive its deepest religious and moral character, when it is rooted in the truth of Christ." And as Christ is Truth, those who are Christ's must never violate the truth. "'Thou shalt not bear false witness; thou shalt not lie, neither in word nor deed; thou shalt neither deny the truth, nor give out anything that is not truth for truth,'--this commandment must dominate and penetrate all our life's relations." "Truth does not exist for man's sake, but man for the sake of the truth, because the truth would reveal itself to man, would be owned and testified by him." This would seem to be explicit enough to shut out the possibility of a justifiable lie!

"Yet it does not follow from this," says Martensen, "that our duty to communicate the truth to others is unlimited.... 'There is a time to be silent, and a time to speak.' No one is bound to say everything to everybody." Here he distinguishes between justifiable concealment and falsehood. Then he comes to the question "whether the so-called 'lie of exigency' can ever be justifiable." He runs over the arguments on both sides, and recalls the centuries of discussion on the subject.

He thinks that adherence to the general principle which forbids lying would, in certain cases where love prompted to falsehood, cause in most minds an inward feeling that the letter killeth, and that to follow the promptings of love were better. Hence he argues that "as in other departments there are actions which, although from the standpoint of the ideal they are to be rejected, yet, from the hardness of men's hearts, must be approved and admitted, and under this restriction become relatively justifiable and dutiful actions, simply because greater evils are thereby averted; so there is also an untruth from exigency that must still be allowed for the sake of human weakness." And in his opinion "it comes to this, that the question of casuistry cannot be solved by general and abstract directions, but must be solved in an individual, personal way, especially according to the stage of moral and religious development and ripeness on which the person in question is found."

Having made these concessions, in the realm of feeling, to the defenders of the "lie of exigency," which may be "either uttered from love to men, or as defense against men--a defense in which either a justifiable self-love or sympathy with others is operative," Martensen proceeds to show that every such falsehood is abnormal and immoral.

"When we thus maintain," he says, "that in certain difficult cases an 'untruth from necessity' may occur, which is to be allowed for the sake of human weakness, and under the given relations may be said to be justified and dutiful, we cannot but allow, on the other hand, that in every such untruth there is something of sin, nay something that needs excuse and forgiveness.... Certainly even the truth of the letter, the external, actual truth, even the formally correct, finds its right, the ground of its validity, in G.o.d's holy order of the world. But by every lie of exigency the command is broken, 'Thou shalt not bear false witness.'"

Martensen protests against the claim of Rothe that a falsehood spoken in love "is not at all to be called a lie, but can be absolutely defended as morally _normal_, and so in no respect needs pardon."

"However sharply we may distinguish between lie and untruth (_mendacium_ and _falsilo-quium_), the untruth in question can never be resolved into the morally normal." And he suggests that if one had more of wisdom and courage and faith, he might be true to the truth in an emergency without fear of the consequences.

"Let us suppose, for instance," he says, "the ... case, where the husband deceives his sick spouse from fear that she could not survive the news of the death of her child; who dare maintain that if the man had been able in the right way, that is in the power of the gospel, with the wisdom and the comfort of faith, to announce the death of the child, a religious crisis might not have arisen in her soul, which might have a healing and quickening effect upon her bodily state? And supposing that it had even led to her death, who dare maintain that that death, if it was a Christian death, were an evil, whether for the mother herself, or for the survivors?

"Or, let us take the woman who, to save her chast.i.ty, applies the defense of an untruth: who dare maintain that if she said the truth to her persecutors, but uttered it in womanly heroism, with a believing look to G.o.d, with the courage, the elevation of soul springing from a pure conscience, exhibiting to her persecutors the badness and unworthiness of their object, she might not have disarmed them by that might that lies in the good, the just cause, the cause whose defense and shield G.o.d himself will be? And even if she had to suffer what is unworthy, who dare maintain that she could not in suffering preserve her moral worth?"

Martensen recalls the story of Jeanie Deans, in Scott's "Heart of Midlothian," who refuses to tell a lie of exigency in order to save her sister's life; yet who, having uttered the truth which led to her sister's sentence of death, set herself, in faith in G.o.d, to secure that sister's pardon, and by G.o.d's grace compa.s.sed it. "Most people would at least be disposed to excuse Jeanie Deans, and to forgive her, if she had here made a false oath, and thereby had afforded her protection to the higher truth." And if a loving lie of exigency be a duty before G.o.d, an appeal to his knowledge of the fact is, of course, equally a duty. To refuse to appeal to G.o.d in witness of the truth of a falsehood that is told from a loving sense of duty, is to show a lack of confidence in G.o.d's approval of such an untruth. "But she will, can, and dare, for her conscience' sake, not do this."

"But the best thing in this tale," adds Martensen, "is that it is no mere fiction. The kernel of this celebrated romance is actual history." And Sir Walter Scott caused a monument to be erected in his garden, with the following inscription, in memory of this faithful truth-lover:

"This stone was placed by the Author of 'Waverley' in memory of Helen Walker, who fell asleep in the year of our Lord 1791. This maiden practiced in humility all the virtues with which fancy had adorned the character that bears in fiction the name of Jeanie Deans. She would not depart a foot's breadth from the path of truth, not even to save her sister's life; and yet she obtained the liberation of her sister from the severity of the law by personal sacrifices whose greatness was not less than the purity of her aims. Honor to the grave where poverty rests in beautiful union with truthfulness and sisterly love."

"Who will not readily obey this request," adds Martensen, "and hold such a memory in honor?... Who does not feel himself penetrated with involuntary, most hearty admiration?"

In conclusion, in view of all that can be said on either side of the question, Martensen is sure that "the lie of exigency itself, which we call inevitable, leaves in us the feeling of something unworthy, and this unworthiness should, simply in following Christ, more and more disappear from our life. That is, the inevitableness of the lie of exigency will disappear in the same measure that an individual develops into a true personality, a true character.... A lie of exigency cannot occur with a personality that is found in possession of full courage, of perfect love and holiness, as of the enlightened, all-penetrating glance. Not even as against madmen and maniacs will a lie of exigency be required, for to the word of the truly sanctified personality there belongs an imposing commanding power that casts out demons. It is this that we see in Christ, in whose mouth no guile was found, in whom we find nothing that even remotely belongs to the category of the exigent lie."

So it is evident that if one would seek excuse for the lie of exigency, in the concessions made by Martensen, he must do so only on the score of the hardness of his heart, and the softness of his head, as one lacking a proper measure of wisdom, of courage, and of faith, to enable him to conform to the proper ideal standard of human conduct. And even then he must recognize the fact that in his weakness he has done something to be ashamed of, and to demand repentance. Cold comfort that for a decent man!

It would seem that personal temperament and individual peculiarities had their part in deciding a man's att.i.tude toward the question of the unvarying duty of veracity, quite as surely as the man's recognition of great principles. An ill.u.s.tration of this truth is shown in the treatment of the subject by Dr. Charles Hodge on the one hand, and by Dr. James H. Thornwell on the other, as representatives, severally, of Calvinistic Augustinianism in the Presbyterian Church of the United States, in its Northern and Southern branches. Starting from the same point of view, and agreeing as to the principles involved, these two thinkers are by no means together in their conclusions; and this, not because of any real difference in their processes of reasoning, but apparently because of the larger place given by the former to the influence of personal feeling, as over against the imperative demands of truth.

Dr. Hodge begins with the recognition and a.s.severation of eternal principles, that can know no change or variation in their application to this question; and then, as he proceeds with its discussion, he is amiably illogical and good-naturedly inconsistent, and he ends in a maze, without seeming quite sure as to his own view of the case, or giving his readers cause to know what should be their view. Dr.

Thornwell, on the other hand, beginning in the same way, proceeds unwaveringly to the close, in logical consistency of reasoning; leaving his readers at the last as fully a.s.sured as he is as to the application of unchangeable principles to man's life and duties.

No one could state the underlying principles involved in this question more clearly and explicitly than does Dr. Hodge at the outset;[1] and it would seem from this statement that he could not be in doubt as to the issue of the discussion of this question of the ages. "The command to keep truth inviolate belongs to a different cla.s.s [of commands]

from those relating to the sabbath, to marriage, or to property. These are founded on the permanent relations of men in the present state of existence. They are not in their own nature immutable. But truth is at all times sacred, because it is one of the essential attributes of G.o.d, so that whatever militates against or is hostile to truth is in opposition to the very nature of G.o.d."

[Footnote 1: See Hodge's _Systematic Theology_, III., 437-463.]

"Truth is, so to speak, the very substratum of Deity. It is in such a sense the foundation of all the moral perfections of G.o.d, that without it they cannot be conceived of as existing. Unless G.o.d really is what he declares himself to be; unless he means what he declares himself to mean; unless he will do what he promises,--the whole idea of G.o.d is lost. As there is no G.o.d but the true G.o.d, so without truth there is and can be no G.o.d. As this attribute is the foundation, so to speak, of the divine, so it is the foundation of the physical and moral order of the universe.... There is, therefore, something awfully sacred in the obligations of truth. A man who violates the truth, sins against the very foundation of his moral being. As a false G.o.d is no G.o.d, so a false man is no man; he can never be what man was designed to be; he can never answer the end of his being. There can be in him nothing that is stable, trustworthy, or good."

Here is a platform that would seem to be the right standing-place for all and for always. Dr. Hodge apparently recognizes its well-defined limits and bounds; yet when he comes to discuss the question whether a certain person is, in a supposable case, on it, or off it, he does not seem so sure as to its precise boundary lines. He begins to waver when he cites Bible incidents. Recognizing the fact that fables and parables, and works of fiction, even though untrue, are not falsehoods, he strangely jumps to the conclusion that the "intention to deceive" is "not always culpable." He immediately follows this non-sequitur with a reference to the lying Hebrew midwives,[1] and he quotes the declaration of G.o.d's blessing on them, as if it were an approval of their lying, or their false speaking with an intention to deceive, instead of an approval of their spirit of devotion to G.o.d's people.[2]

[Footnote 1: Exod. I: 19, 20.]

[Footnote 2: Comp. p. 35 f., _supra_.]

From the midwives he pa.s.ses to Samuel, sent of G.o.d to Bethlehem; [1]

and under cover of the expressed opinions of others, Dr. Hodge says vaguely: "Here, it is said, is a case of intentional deception commanded. Saul was to be deceived as to the object of Samuel's journey to Bethlehem." Yet, whoever "said" this was guilty of a gratuitous charge of intentional deception, against the Almighty.

Samuel was directed of G.o.d to speak the truth, so far as he spoke at all, while he concealed from others that which others had no right to know.[2] It would appear, however, throughout this discussion, that Dr. Hodge does not perceive the clear and important distinction between justifiable concealment from those who have no right to a knowledge of the facts, and concealment, or even false speaking, with the deliberate intention of deceiving those interested. In fact, Dr.

Hodge does not even mention "concealment," as apart from its use for the specific purpose of deception.

[Footnote 1: I Sam. 16: i, 2.]

[Footnote 2: Comp. pp. 38-40, _supra_.]