"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 entitled 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 Lassen Martensen, "the greatest theologian of Denmark," and a thinker of the first class, "with high speculative endowments, and a considerable tincture of theosophical mysticism."[1] Martensen's "Christian Ethics" do not ignore God 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 retarded 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 God's holy order of the world. But by every lie of exigency the command is broken, 'Thou shalt not bear false witness.'"