On Lying 1–12

There is a great question about lying, which often troubles us in our very everyday actions, lest we either rashly accuse as a lie what is not a lie, or think that one must sometimes lie with an honest, obliging, and merciful lie. This question we will treat so carefully that we seek together with those who seek; but whether we find anything, the treatment itself will show clearly enough to an attentive reader, since we affirm nothing rashly. For it is exceedingly full of hiding places, and with certain cave-like windings, as it were, it often eludes the effort of the one who seeks, so that at one moment what had been found seems to slip out of one's hands, at another it appears again and again is swallowed up. In the end, however, a surer tracking will capture our opinion. If there is any error in it, since truth frees from every error and falsehood entangles in every error, I think one never errs more safely than when one errs through too much love of truth and too much rejection of falsehood. For those who censure severely say this is too much; but the Truth itself would perhaps still say: it is not yet enough. Whoever you are who read, censure nothing until you have read the whole; and so you will censure less. Do not look for eloquence; for we have labored much over the matters themselves and over the speed of finishing a work so necessary for daily life; hence our care for words has been slight and almost none.

Setting aside jokes, then, which have never been thought lies (for they carry, from the manner of speaking and the very mood of the joker, a most evident sign of a mind in no way deceiving, even if not stating true things; whether this kind of speech should be used by perfect souls is another question, which we have not undertaken to untangle now), setting aside jokes, then, we must first deal with this: that one who does not lie should not be thought to lie.

Therefore we must see what a lie is. For not everyone who says something false lies, if he believes or supposes that what he says is true. Between believing and supposing there is this difference: that sometimes he who believes is aware that he does not know what he believes, although he does not doubt at all about the thing he knows he does not know, if he believes it most firmly; but he who supposes thinks he knows what he does not know. Now whoever states what he holds in his mind as believed or supposed, even if it is false, does not lie. For he owes this to the good faith of his statement, that he should bring forth by it what he holds in his mind, and holds it as he brings it forth. Yet he is not therefore without fault, though he does not lie, if he either believes what ought not to be believed or thinks he knows what he does not know, even if it is true; for he takes the unknown for the known. Therefore he lies who has one thing in his mind and states another in words or in any signs whatever. Hence the heart of the liar is also said to be double, that is, a double thought: one of the thing which he either knows or thinks to be true and does not bring forth; the other of the thing which he brings forth instead of it, knowing or thinking it to be false. From this it comes about that one can say something false without lying, if he thinks it is as he says, though it is not so; and that one can say something true while lying, if he thinks it false and states it as true, though in reality it is as he states. For one is to be judged lying or not lying from the intent of his own mind, not from the truth or falsehood of the things themselves. So he who states something false as true, which he nevertheless supposes to be true, can be called mistaken and rash; but he is not rightly called lying, because he does not have a double heart when he states it, nor does he desire to deceive, but is himself deceived. The fault of the liar, however, is the desire to deceive in stating his mind: whether he deceives, when he is believed as he states the false; or does not deceive, either when he is not believed, or when, with the will to deceive, he states the true which he does not think true. When he is believed in this, he certainly does not deceive, though he wished to deceive; except in so far as he deceives in being thought to know or think as he states.

Yet it may be asked most subtly whether, when the will to deceive is absent, a lie is absent altogether. For what if someone says something false that he considers false, yet does so because he thinks he will not be believed, so as in that way, by a false assurance, to deter the person he is speaking to, whom he perceives to be unwilling to believe him? Here he lies out of a desire not to deceive, if lying is stating something otherwise than you know or think it to be; but if it is not a lie except when someone states something with the will to deceive, this man does not lie, who says something false, though he knows or thinks that what he says is false, precisely so that the one he speaks to, by not believing him, may not be deceived, because he knows or thinks that he will not believe him. Hence, if it appears possible that someone says something false so that the one to whom it is said may not be deceived, there arises on the contrary another kind: one who says the truth in order to deceive. For he who speaks the truth because he perceives that he is not believed certainly says the truth in order to deceive; for he knows or thinks that what is said can be thought false precisely because it is said by him. Therefore, when he says the truth so that it may be thought false, he says the truth in order to deceive. We must ask, then, which of them rather lies: he who says the false so as not to deceive, or he who says the true in order to deceive, since the one knows or thinks he is saying the false, and the other knows or thinks he is saying the true. For we have already said that he who does not know that what he states is false does not lie, if he thinks it true, and that he rather lies who states even the true when he thinks it false, because they are to be judged from the intent of their own mind. So there is no small question about the two we have put forward. One knows or thinks he is saying something false, and says it so as not to deceive: for instance, if he knows that a road is beset by robbers and, fearing that a man whose safety he is concerned for might go that way, and knowing that the man does not believe him, he says that the road has no robbers, so that he will not go that way, since the man believes the robbers are there precisely because he has said they are not, having resolved not to believe him, thinking him a liar. The other, knowing or thinking that what he says is true, nevertheless says it in order to deceive: as if he should say to a man who does not believe him that there are robbers on that road where he knows there really are, so that the man he speaks to may go that way all the more and so fall among the robbers, while he thinks what was said to be false. Which of these, then, lies: he who chose to say the false so as not to deceive, or he who chose to say the true in order to deceive? He who by saying the false brought it about that the one he spoke to followed the truth, or he who by saying the true brought it about that the one he spoke to followed the false? Or perhaps both lied: the one because he wished to say the false, the other because he wished to deceive? Or rather did neither of them lie: the one because he had the will not to deceive, the other because he had the will to say the truth? For the question now is not which of them sinned, but which lied. For it is quickly seen that he sinned who by saying the true brought it about that the man fell among robbers, and that he did not sin, or even did well, who by saying the false brought it about that the man avoided destruction. But these examples can be turned round, so that the first wishes the man he does not want deceived to suffer something worse (for many have brought destruction on themselves by learning certain truths, if they were such as ought to have been hidden from them), and the second wishes the man he wants deceived to obtain some advantage. For some who would have killed themselves if they had learned of some evil that had truly befallen their dear ones spared themselves by thinking it false; and so being deceived benefited them, as knowing the truth harmed others. The question, then, is not with what intention of helping or harming either the one said the false so as not to deceive or the other said the true in order to deceive; but, leaving aside the advantages or disadvantages of those to whom they spoke, it is asked, as far as truth and falsehood themselves are concerned, which of them, or whether both or neither, lied. For if a lie is a statement with the will to state something false, the first rather lied, who wished to say the false and said what he wished, though he said it so as not to deceive; but if a lie is any statement with the will to deceive, not the first but the second lied, who wished to deceive even by saying the true. And if a lie is a statement with the will of any falsehood, both lied, because the first wished his statement to be false and the second wished his true statement to be believed false. Further, if a lie is the statement of one who wishes to state the false in order to deceive, neither lied, because the first had the will to persuade of the true by saying the false, and the second to say the true in order to persuade of the false. All rashness and every lie will be absent, then, when we both state, when there is need, what we know to be true and worthy of belief, and wish to persuade of what we state. But if, either thinking true what is false, or taking for known what is unknown to us, or believing what ought not to be believed, or stating something when there is no need, we nevertheless try to persuade of nothing other than what we state, the error of rashness is indeed not absent, but every lie is absent. For none of those definitions need be feared when the mind is well aware that it states what it knows or supposes or believes to be true, and wishes to persuade of nothing except what it states.

But whether a lie is ever useful is a much greater and more necessary question. Whether, then, he lies who has no will to deceive, or even acts so that the one to whom he states something may not be deceived, though he willed the statement itself to be false, because he willed it in order to persuade of the truth; and whether he lies who states even the truth willingly for the sake of deceiving: these can be doubted. But no one doubts that he lies who willingly states the false for the sake of deceiving. Therefore it is plain that a false statement uttered with the will to deceive is a lie. But whether this alone is a lie is another question. Meanwhile, let us inquire about this kind, on which all agree: whether it is ever useful to state something false with the will to deceive. For those who think so bring testimonies for their opinion, recalling that Sarah, when she had laughed, denied to the angels that she had laughed; that Jacob, when asked by his father, answered that he was Esau, his elder son; that the Egyptian midwives too lied so that the Hebrew infants being born might not be killed, and God even approved and rewarded them. And choosing many examples of this kind, they recall the lies of men whom you would not dare to blame, so that you must admit that a lie can sometimes be not only not worthy of censure but even worthy of praise. They add something too, to press not only those devoted to the divine books but all men and common sense, saying: "If someone takes refuge with you who can be freed from death by your lie, will you not lie? If a sick man asks something which it is not good for him to know, and who might be more gravely afflicted even if you do not answer, will you dare either to tell the truth to the man's ruin, or to keep silent rather than help his health with an honest and merciful lie?" With these and similar arguments they think they urge most abundantly that we should sometimes lie, if the cause of helping requires it.

On the other side, those who hold that one must never lie argue much more strongly, using first the divine authority, since it is written in the Decalogue itself: "You shall not bear false witness," under which kind every lie is included; for whoever states anything bears witness to his own mind. But lest anyone contend that not every lie is to be called false witness, what will he say to what is written: "The mouth that lies kills the soul"? And lest anyone think this can be understood with some liars excepted, let him read in another place: "You will destroy all who speak a lie." Hence the Lord himself says with his own mouth: "Let there be in your mouth, Yes, yes; No, no; for whatever is more than this is from evil." Hence the apostle too, when he commanded that the old man be put off, a name under which all sins are understood, fittingly says, putting this first: "Wherefore, putting away lying, speak the truth."

Nor, they say, are they alarmed by the examples of lies brought forward from the old books. There, whatever was done can be taken figuratively, although it really happened; and whatever is done or said figuratively is not a lie. For every statement must be referred to what it states; and everything done or said figuratively states what it signifies to those for whose understanding it was brought forth. Hence it must be believed that those men who are recorded as having been of authority in prophetic times did and said prophetically all that is written of them; and no less prophetically did whatever happened to them happen, which happened in such a way that it was judged, by the same prophetic Spirit, worthy to be committed to memory and writing. As for the midwives, since they cannot say that they reported one thing for another to Pharaoh by the prophetic Spirit for the sake of signifying a future truth, even if what was done through them signified something without their knowing it, they say that they were approved and rewarded by God according to their stage. For one who is accustomed to lie for the sake of harming has made great progress if he now lies for the sake of helping. But it is one thing that is put forward as praiseworthy in itself, another that is preferred in comparison with something worse. For we congratulate a man one way when he is healthy, another way when a sick man is better. For in the Scriptures themselves even Sodom is said to be justified in comparison with the crimes of the people of Israel. And to this rule they direct all the lies brought forward from the old books that are found not to be censured or cannot be censured: that either they are approved for the promise and hope of people making progress, or, for the sake of some signification, they are not lies at all.

And therefore, from the books of the New Testament, apart from the figurative significations of the Lord, if you consider the life and conduct and the deeds and words of the saints, nothing of that kind can be brought forward to provoke imitation of lying. For the pretense of Peter and Barnabas is not only recorded but also censured and corrected. For it was not, as some think, by the same pretense that the apostle Paul either circumcised Timothy or himself celebrated certain sacred rites in the Jewish manner, but by that freedom of his judgment by which he preached that circumcision neither benefits the Gentiles nor harms the Jews. Hence he judged that neither should the former be bound to the custom of the Jews nor the latter be deterred from the custom of their fathers. Hence these are his words: "Was anyone called circumcised? Let him not draw on. Was anyone called in uncircumcision? Let him not be circumcised. Circumcision is nothing and uncircumcision is nothing, but the keeping of God's commandments. Let each remain in the calling in which he was called." For how can the foreskin that has been cut off be drawn on? But "let him not draw on" he said to mean: let him not live as though he had drawn on the foreskin, that is, as though he had drawn the covering of the flesh back over the part he laid bare and had ceased to be a Jew; as he says elsewhere: "Your circumcision has become uncircumcision." And the apostle said this not as compelling either the former to remain in uncircumcision or the Jews in the custom of their fathers, but so that neither should be compelled to the other's way, and each should have the power, not the necessity, of remaining in his own custom. For if a Jew had wished, where he would disturb no one, to withdraw from Jewish observances, he would not have been forbidden by the apostle, since he gave the counsel to remain in them for this purpose, that the Jews might not be disturbed by superfluous things and so fail to come to what was necessary for salvation; nor would he have forbidden any of the Gentiles, if he wished to be circumcised in order to show that he did not detest it as harmful but held it as indifferent, as a seal whose usefulness had now passed with time; for if salvation no longer came from it, neither was destruction to be feared from it. And so Timothy too, though he was called in uncircumcision, yet because he was born of a Jewish mother and had to show his kinsmen, in order to win them, that he had not learned in the Christian teaching to abominate those sacraments that belonged to the old law, was circumcised by the apostle; so that in this way they might show the Jews that the Gentiles did not take them up, not because they were evil and harmfully observed by the fathers, but because they were no longer necessary for salvation after the coming of so great a sacrament, which the whole old Scripture had been in labor with through so long a time by prophetic figures. For he would have circumcised Titus too, when the Jews were pressing for this, had not the false brothers brought in secretly wanted it done so that they might have something to spread about Paul himself, as though he had yielded to the "truth" of those who preached that the hope of the gospel's salvation lay in the circumcision of the flesh and observances of that kind, and contended that without them Christ profited no one; whereas, on the contrary, Christ profited nothing to those who were circumcised with the intention of thinking that salvation lay there. Hence that saying: "Behold, I Paul say to you that if you are circumcised, Christ will profit you nothing." From this freedom, then, Paul observed the observances of the fathers, guarding against and preaching this one thing: that it should not be thought that there is no Christian salvation without them. But Peter by his pretense, as though salvation lay in Judaism, was compelling the Gentiles to judaize, as the words of Paul show, when he says: "How do you compel the Gentiles to judaize?" For they would not have been compelled unless they saw him observing them as though there could be no salvation apart from them. Peter's pretense, then, is not to be compared with Paul's freedom. And so we ought to love Peter, who was willingly corrected, but not also to build up a lie on the authority of Paul, since he both called Peter back to the right way before all, lest the Gentiles be compelled through him to judaize, and bore witness to his own preaching: for when he was thought to be an enemy of the traditions of the fathers because he would not impose them on the Gentiles, by not disdaining to celebrate them himself in the ancestral way he showed clearly enough that at Christ's coming there remained in them this much: that they were neither harmful to the Jews, nor necessary to the Gentiles, nor any longer saving for anyone.

If, then, no authority for lying can be brought forward from the ancient books, either because what is taken as done or said figuratively is not a lie, or because what is praised in bad men, when they have begun to make progress, in comparison with something worse, is not held up to the good for imitation; nor from the books of the New Testament, because Peter's correction rather than his pretense is to be imitated, as his tears rather than his denial: then they assert with much greater confidence that the examples brought forward from common life are not to be trusted. For first they teach that lying is iniquity, by many proofs from the holy writings, and above all by what is written: "You hate, O Lord, all who work iniquity; you will destroy all who speak a lie." For either, as Scripture is accustomed to do, it explained the former verse by the following one, so that, since iniquity usually extends more widely, we should understand that by naming lying it meant to indicate a species of iniquity; or, if they think there is some difference, lying is worse in proportion as "you will destroy" is put more severely than "you hate." For perhaps God hates someone somewhat more mildly, so as not to destroy him; but whom he destroys he hates the more vehemently the more severely he punishes. Now he hates all who work iniquity; but all who speak a lie he also destroys. This being established, which of those who assert these things will be moved by those examples, when it is said: "What if a man takes refuge with you who can be freed from death by your lie?" For that death, which men foolishly fear who do not fear to sin, kills not the soul but the body, as the Lord teaches in the gospel (hence he commands that it not be feared); but the mouth that lies kills not the body but the soul. For it is written in the plainest words: "But the mouth that lies kills the soul." How, then, is it not said most perversely that, in order that one may live bodily, another ought to die spiritually? For love of neighbor itself takes its limit from each one's love of himself: "You shall love," he says, "your neighbor as yourself." How, then, does anyone love as himself one to whom, in order to secure temporal life, he himself loses eternal life? Indeed, if for the other's temporal life he loses his own temporal life, this is no longer loving as himself but more than himself, which goes beyond the rule of sound doctrine. Much less, then, is he to lose his own eternal life for another's temporal life by lying. His temporal life, clearly, the Christian will not hesitate to lose for the eternal life of his neighbor; for this example went before, that the Lord himself died for us. For this reason he also says: "This is my commandment, that you love one another as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends." For no one is so foolish as to say that the Lord cared for anything other than the eternal salvation of men, whether by doing what he commanded or by commanding what he did. Since, then, eternal life is lost by lying, one must never lie for anyone's temporal life. Indeed, these people who are vexed and indignant if someone is unwilling to destroy his own soul by a lie so that another may grow old in the flesh: what if someone could be freed from death by our theft, or by adultery? Must we therefore steal or commit adultery? For they do not know that they are forcing themselves to this: that if a man brings a noose and demands sexual intercourse, declaring that he will hang himself unless what he asks is granted him, one should consent for the sake of freeing a soul, as they themselves say. But if this is absurd and wicked, why should anyone corrupt his own soul by a lie so that another may live in the body, when, if he gave his own body to be corrupted for that reason, he would be condemned by the judgment of all for wicked shamefulness? So in this question nothing is to be attended to except whether lying is iniquity. And since this is asserted by the proofs mentioned above, we must see that to ask whether anyone ought to lie for another's safety is as if one asked whether anyone ought to be unjust for another's safety. But if the salvation of the soul rejects this, since it cannot be preserved except by justice, and commands us to put it before not only another's temporal safety but our own too, what remains, they say, that should make us doubt that one must never lie at all? For it cannot be said that among temporal goods there is anything greater or dearer than safety and bodily life. Hence, if not even that is to be preferred to truth, what can be objected, on account of which those who think one sometimes ought to lie may contend that one must lie?

As for the chastity of the body, because it seems to present itself as a very honorable person and to demand a lie on its own behalf, so that if a violator rushes in who could be avoided by a lie, one should lie without hesitation: it can easily be answered that there is no chastity of the body unless it depends on the integrity of the mind; if that is broken, it must fall, even if it seems untouched; and therefore it is not to be counted among temporal things, as though it could be taken from the unwilling. In no way, then, does the mind corrupt itself by a lie for the sake of its body, which it knows remains uncorrupted if incorruption does not depart from the mind itself. For what the body suffers by violence, with no lust going before, is to be called affliction rather than corruption. Or if every affliction is corruption, not every corruption is shameful, but only that which lust has brought about or to which lust has consented. And the more excellent the mind is than the body, the more wickedly is it corrupted. Chastity, therefore, can be kept there where there can be no corruption except a voluntary one. For certainly, if a violator seizes the body who can be avoided neither by opposing force nor by any plan or lie, we must admit that chastity cannot be violated by another's lust. Therefore, since no one doubts that the mind is better than the body, the integrity of the mind, which can be kept for ever, is to be put before the integrity of the body. And who would say that the mind of a liar is whole? Indeed, lust itself is rightly defined as the appetite of the mind by which any temporal goods whatever are put before eternal goods. No one, therefore, can prove that one must sometimes lie, unless he can show that some eternal good can be obtained by a lie. But since each one departs from eternity as far as he departs from truth, it is most absurd to say that by departing from it one can arrive at some good. Or if there is some eternal good that truth does not embrace, it will not be true, and therefore it will not be good either, because it will be false. And as the mind is to be put before the body, so truth is to be put before the mind itself, so that the mind may desire it not only more than the body but even more than itself. For so it will be more whole and more chaste, when it enjoys the unchangeability of truth rather than its own changeability. But if Lot, righteous as he was, so that he was found worthy even to receive angels as guests, offered his daughters to the Sodomites to be violated, so that women's bodies rather than men's might be corrupted by them, how much more carefully and steadfastly must the chastity of the mind be kept in the truth, since the mind itself is more truly to be preferred to its body than a man's body to a woman's body.

But if anyone thinks that one should lie to someone on another's behalf so that he may live for the time being, or may not be offended in the things he greatly loves, so that he may come to the eternal truth by learning, he does not understand, first, that there is no shameful deed that he would not be forced to undertake on the same condition, as has already been shown above; and second, that the authority of the teaching itself is cut off and utterly perishes if, by our lie, we persuade those whom we are trying to lead to it that one must sometimes lie. For since saving teaching consists partly of things to be believed and partly of things to be understood, and one cannot arrive at what is to be understood unless what is to be believed is first believed, how is one to believe a man who thinks that one must sometimes lie, lest perhaps he is lying even when he instructs us to believe? For how can it be known whether even then he has, as he thinks, some reason for an obliging lie, supposing that a man terrified by a false story can be restrained from lust, and so judging that by lying he is serving even spiritual ends? Once this kind is admitted and approved, the whole discipline of faith is utterly overthrown; and when that is overthrown, one does not arrive at understanding either, for the grasping of which faith nourishes the little ones. And so all teaching of truth is taken away, yielding to the most licentious falsehood, if room to get in from anywhere is opened to a lie, as if it were an obliging one. For whoever lies either puts temporal advantages, his own or another's, before truth (and what could be more perverse than that?), or, when he wishes by the help of a lie to make someone fit to attain truth, he shuts off the approach to truth; for in wishing, when he lies, to be helpful, he becomes, when he tells the truth, uncertain. Therefore, either the good are not to be believed, or we must believe those whom we believe ought sometimes to lie, or we must not believe that the good ever lie. Of these three, the first is ruinous, the second foolish; it remains, then, that the good never lie.

Though the question has thus been considered and treated from both sides, a verdict is still not easily given; but we must still listen carefully to those who say that no deed is so evil that it should not be done to avoid a worse one; and that among the deeds of men belongs not only whatever they do, but also whatever they suffer with consent. Hence, if a case arose in which a Christian had to choose to burn incense to idols so as not to consent to sexual violation, which the persecutor threatened him with unless he did so, they seem rightly to ask why he should not also lie in order to avoid so great a shame. For they say that the very consent by which he would prefer to suffer violation rather than burn incense to idols is not a suffering but a deed; and to avoid doing it he chose to burn incense. How much more readily, then, would he have chosen a lie, if by a lie he could remove so monstrous an outrage from a holy body!