A Lie Never Justifiable: A Study in Ethics

by H. Clay Trumbull

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 chastity, 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 God, 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 God 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 God, to secure that sister's pardon, and by God's grace compassed 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 God, an appeal to his knowledge of the fact is, of course, equally a duty. To refuse to appeal to God 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 God'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 attitude toward the question of the unvarying duty of veracity, quite as surely as the man's recognition of great principles. An illustration 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.