It is natural to find Aquinas, as a representative of the keen-minded Dominicans, standing by truth as an eternal principle, regardless of consequences; as it is also natural to find, on the other side, Duns Scotus, as a representative of the easy-going Franciscans, with his denial of good absolute save as manifested in the arbitrary will of God. Duns Scotus accepted the "theory of a twofold truth," ascribed to Averroes, "that one and the same affirmation might be theologically true and philosophically false, and vice versa." In Duns Scotus's view, "God does not choose a thing because it is good, but the thing chosen is good because God chooses it;" "it is good simply and solely because God has willed it precisely so; but he might just as readily have willed the opposite thereof. Hence also God is not [eternally] bound by his commands, and he can in fact annul them."[1] According to this view, God could forbid lying to-day and justify it to-morrow. It is not surprising, therefore, that "falsehood and misrepresentation" are "under certain circumstances allowable," in the opinion of Duns Scotus.
[Footnote 1: See Kurtz's Church History (Macpherson's Translation), II., 101, 167-169; Ueberweg's History of Philosophy, I., 416, 456 f.; Wuttke's Christian Ethics (Am. ed.), I., 218, Sec. 34.]
So, all along the centuries, the religious teacher who holds to the line between truth and falsehood as an eternal line must, if logically consistent, refuse to admit any possible justification of lying. Only he who denies an eternally absolute line between the true and the false could admit with consistency the justification by God of an act that is essentially hostile to the divine nature. Any exception to this rule is likely to be where a sympathetic nature inclines a teacher to seek for an excuse for that which seems desirable even though it be theoretically wrong.
When it comes to the days of the Protestant Reformation, we find John Calvin, like his prototype Augustine, and like Augustine's follower Aquinas, standing firmly against a lie as antagonistic to the very nature of God, and therefore never justifiable. Martin Luther, also, is a fearless lover of the truth; but he is disposed to find excuses for a lie told with a good end in view, although he refrains from asserting that even the best disposed lie lacks the element of sinfulness.[1] On the other hand, Ignatius Loyola, and his associates in the founding of the Society of Jesus as a means of checking the Protestant Reformation, acted on the idea that was involved in the theology of Duns Scotus, that the only standard of truth and right is in the absolute and arbitrary will of God; and that, therefore, if God, speaking through his representative in the newly formed Society, commands the telling of a lie, a lie is justifiable, and its telling is a duty. Moreover, these Jesuit leaders in defining, or in explaining away, the lie, include, under the head of justifiable concealment, equivocations and falsifications that the ordinary mind would see to be forms of the lie.[2]
[Footnote 1: See Martensen's Christian Ethics, p. 216. Compare, for example, Luther's comments on Exodus I: 15-21, with Calvin's comments on Genesis 12: 14-20.]
[Footnote 2: See Symonds's Renaissance in Italy, I., 263-267;
Cartwright's The Jesuits; Meyrick's Moral Theology of the Church
of Rome; Pascal's Provincial Letters. See, also, Kurtz's Church
History, II., 430.]
It is common to point to the arguments of the Jesuits in favor of lies of expediency, in their work for the Church and for souls, as though their position were exceptional, and they stood all by themselves in including falsehood as a means to be employed rightfully for a good end.
But in this they are simply logically consistent followers of those Christian Fathers, and their successors in every branch of the Church, who have held that a lie for righteous purposes was admissible when the results to be secured by it were of vital importance. All the refinements of casuistry have their value to those who admit that a lie may be right under certain conceivable circumstances; but to those who, like Augustine and Aquinas, insist that a lie is a sin per se, and therefore never admissible, casuistry itself has no interest as a means of showing when a sin is not sinful.[1]
[Footnote 1: Hence the casuistry of the Schoolmen and of the Jesuits, and the question of Mental Reservations, and of "Probabilities," are not treated in detail here.]
Some of the zealous defenders of the principles and methods of the Jesuits affirm that, in their advocacy of dissimulation and prevarication in the interests of a good cause, the Jesuits do not intend to justify lying, but are pointing out methods of proper concealment which are not within the realm of the lie. In this (waiving the question whether these defenders are right or not as to the fact) they seem even more desirous of being counted against lying than those teachers, in the Romish Church or among Protestants, who boldly affirm that a lie itself is sometimes justifiable. Thus it is claimed by a Roman Catholic writer, in defense of the Jesuits, that Liguori, their favorite theologian, taught "that to speak falsely is immutably a sin against God. It may be permitted under no circumstances, not even to save life. Pope Innocent III. says, 'Not even to defend our life is it lawful to speak falsely;'" therefore, when Liguori approves any actions that seem opposed to truthfulness, "he allows the instances because they are not falsehood."[1] On the other hand, Jeremy Taylor squarely asserts: "It is lawful to tell a lie to children or to madmen, because they, having no powers of judging, have no right to the truth."[2]