On Lying: A Moral Guide Based Upon Lombard’s Sentences. Part II: The Context
Book III of the Sentences is Lombard’s Christological treatise; the virtues are brought up within the context of how they exist in Christ: Lombard wants to explore how one is to understand that Christ is said to possess love (charity). In his discourse, he says that the whole of the law and prophets can be summed up as a focus on caritas.[1] This means virtues will only be fulfilled out of love, and not out of fear, such as the fear of punishment. To support his claim, Lombard focuses upon Jesus words in Matthew 22:37 -40,[2] and, how Augustine employs them in On Christian Doctrine[3], The Enchiridion[4], Sermo 350[5] and a letter he calls To Anastasius.[6] From this, Lombard proposes to interpret the Ten Commandments, to show how their positive affirmation can be found from these rules of love.[7] “And just as all the rest of the commandments are referred to the ten of the Decalogue, so these ten are referred to the two commandments of charity.”[8] The first three commandments are about the love we are to have for God, and the last seven are about the love we are to have for our neighbor.[9]
It’s of great importance to see how this constitutes a reorientation of the moral condition, when morality is put upon the level of caritas instead of as being an imperative based upon the most literal interpretation of the words used to describe the Law. In other words, the problem with legalism is that it does not understand the underlying spirit of the Law, which is love. In the revelation of the Trinity, in the revelation of God as love, the Law, understood merely as a tool to dictate what we ought and ought not to do, preserving God’s sovereign authority over humanity, is shown to be less than God’s true intent for it. The Law is not meant to be a thing of external control, but of inner guidance, to lead us to our own betterment, to help us achieve our proper end (theosis). Thus, what Jesus said about the Sabbath, “The sabbath was made for man, not man for the Sabbath,”(Mark 2:27) makes sense when the Law is understood within the revelation of love, for we can understand how the Law’s essence is found in its teleological goal, which must always transcend the Law itself, while the legalist finds its essence is in its letter, removing its transcendental character. “Thus the Law is rendered old and obsolete by the letter and becomes useless, but it is made young and thoroughly active by the Spirit.”[10]
Lombard brings up the question of lies within an examination of the fifth commandment of the “second tablet” of the Decalogue, “You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor” (Ex. 20:16). Initially, this might seem to be quite restrictive, for it would seem that many things which we consider to be a lie could not be said to be said against our neighbor; indeed, at times we might even lie because we think it would be better for them to hear the lie than to be told the truth, such as what happens when we tell a so-called “white lie.” His assertion that this commandment speaks against perjury makes sense, because one gives testimony under oath in order to provide information which will have a concrete affect upon the lives of one or more people (as is also the case when one swears under oath for some kind of pact). But what are we to make of other kinds of lies? If one believes the whole moral law is contained within the Decalaogue, then this is the most likely place to bring up a discussion of lies. But would this make a deceitful speech said without any intent to be said against our neighbor, without any intent to harm them, not a lie? What he quotes from Augustine’s Quaestiones in Heptateuchum does not provide us any answer, but rather explains why one needs to examine the notion of the lie properly, for, as Augustine says, the topic is great and cannot be gone through hastily.[11]
Therefore, before we explore Lombard further, we need to briefly answer this question, and it can help serve as a hermeneutic to engage the rest of Lombard’s text. Any lie must, to be a lie, contain some element of harm to one’s neighbor, however slight it might be. The objective evil produced will depend in part upon how great the actual harm is in the lie. The interdependent nature of the world shows us the world is set up with an intricate system of relationships; just a small misappropriation of those relationships can affect the way one interacts with the world, causing harm because of that error. To purposefully misrepresent those bonds, even if it appears for the greater good (as in a white lie) will nonetheless willfully lead someone to misperceive their place in the world, and their actions will be affected and harmful to them in accordance to the quality of the misinformation given them. In this way, any lie must be said to be an act against charity, even if one believes they are being charitable by lying (it is, one can say, the same error which lies with any wrong act of the will – the misappropriation of a particular good outside of its rightful place). For the most part, when one finds oneself in a situation where they feel “what harm can it be to lie here, won’t it help them to hear this lie?” one is in a situation when one does not have to speak, and silence would be more appropriate than speech. But, if, for some reason, silence is not possible, then one must understand that proper speech will always be best, and to speak wisely so as to do the least harm in one’s speech, so that what is said can lead to a firm foundation, and not one of sand (cf. Matt 7:26).
Footnotes
[1] See Peter Lombard, The Sentences. Book III. Trans. Giulio Silano (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 2008) Dist XXVII, c3.
[2] “And he said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind. This is the great and first commandment. And a second is like it, You shall love your neighbor as yourself. On these two commandments depend all the law and the prophets.’”
[3] Bk. I, c35 n39.
[4] c121
[5] n2.
[6] Letter 145, n4.
[7] St. Bonaventure, following through with this interpretation of the Ten Commandments in his Collations, points out that this rule of love must be seen as what makes for justice: “And it should be noted that the whole of the Law commands nothing but justice. For the Law is the rule of justice. Moreover, justice is that which orders the human person to God and to his neighbor. And so there is a twofold justice; one by which we are ordered to God, and the other by which we are ordered to our neighbor.” St. Bonaventure, Collations On the Ten Commandments. Trans. Paul J. Spaeth (St. Bonaventure, New York: The Franciscan Institute, 1995), 26.
[8] Peter Lombard, The Sentences. Book III, dist XXVII, c3
[9] St Bonaventure, following Lombard and Augustine, says, ”And so two tablets were given to Moses: On the first are contained the commandments ordering us to God; on the second the commandments ordering us to our neighbor,” St. Bonaventure, Collations on the Ten Commandments, 26. See also Peter Lombard, The Sentences. Book III, dist. XXXVII, c1.
[10] St Maximus the Confessor, “Chapters on Knowledge,” pgs. 129 – 180 in Maximus Confessor: Selected Writings. Trans. George C. Berthold (New York: Paulist Press, 1985), 145 – n.I-89.
[11] Cf. Augustine, Quaestiones in Heptateuchum, bk 2 q71.
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Just a note: while I posted parts 1 and 2 within a day of each other, I won’t be posting the other sections so quickly. I want to make sure people have time to read each section, but I also wanted to have more than my own introduction, but something which addresses Lombard directly on before I begin to space out the posts.
Henry Karlson,
If I’m understanding your definition of a lie accordingly, absent any such harm, what seems to be a lie, such as the one we discussed under your original entry concerning those told by Catholics hiding the whereabouts of the Jews under the vicious persecution of the Nazis, is not actually one at all, especially in the sense that if the truth had been told, the greatest harm would have been to the Jews themselves in lost of their own lives?
Also, just a small request, could you possibly incorporate cited passages from Lombard and other cited texts (even if it happens to be a minimal portion thereof) just to give some preview of it in connection to your explanation in its regard?
Ari
I do cite much from Lombard (and the sources he quotes from) throughout the text, so that will be dealt with.
Secondly, the issue of the lie about told to the Nazi. I am going to only give a brief response in relation to what has been said so far; there are more issues which will be brought out later in Lombard which will also help bring an answer to this question. I expect this will be one of the things I will have to address in the concluding section, after what is found in Lombard has been addressed.
For now, to answer your question, I would say this: imagine what would happen to the soldier who could have found a Jew, did not, and it is discovered they let a Jew go? While the soldier is doing wrong, looking for Jews, it is most likely they are also under pressure to do so, and if they did not do so, they, or someone they loved, would be harmed (or even killed). In this way, while it does not justify them, it shows they are forced to follow orders, and their will is not as free as someone without such orders, and so their subjective guilt must be seen accordingly. It is not virtuous,and indeed, it is sinful, even though it is being done under pressure. And, as you said, the greater good would be in the preservation of the life of the Jew than the harm the soldier might take for letting a Jew go. But the misinformation itself, as history shows, has ways of backfiring and causing harm, and so we must not assume that, just because we dupe the soldier, it will not affect them later.
As a side note, often the way Lombard will work is he will raise a question, and then just provide a long quote (mostly from Augustine) to answer it. Sometimes he will provide a comment, sometimes he will not. Often I will quote what Lombard himself quoted, within the text I written, but this is not always the case — sometimes I just summarize it, for various reasons (I don’t have a good copy of the text myself to use, I don’t think it adds to what is found elsewhere, etc). Here, since I was bringing the context in which Lombard was writing, I tried to do more summary than exposition, so as people will have it as background for Lombard’s discussion on lies themselves. Saying that, I have added elements of my own thought into the summary, albeit ones which reinforce the implications, and add to them, or, as you could see, to help comment upon an issue which I did not think Lombard himself addressed.
Henry Karlson,
I’m not so sure I can agree with your assessment here, but hopefully, I can find more adequate resolution to the standing query in your later installments.
In particular, we are dealing with the inevitable execution of not just a Jew, but more likely a host of them since there were those Catholics who harbored many of these and subsequently guided them to safety.
Now, in addition, we are not simply speaking here about just that immediate group of Jews even, but also the continued work of those Catholics harboring them and the future lives of other Jews who would likewise suffer extermination at the hands of the Nazis if said Catholics were to compromise themselves (as well as surrendering the lives of those Jews immediately under their care) by telling the Nazi officer the truth about their immediate whereabouts.
That is, I don’t see how such a rigid formulation of the subject principle as well as the circumstances themselves could actually permit such a conclusion especially in the case of such inevitable slaughter that would otherwise occur if truth be told.
Would it be right (and, more specifically, would it even serve the Cause of God, The Faith and Our Lord Himself) if we should actually allow the wholesale slaughter of an entire people all just to say that we did not deceive their executioners & actually aided them to commit this very Evil by doing so (i.e., telling them where they can find their prey)?
Still, I can only trust that further engagement of your underlying essay here might help resolve those issues.
Ari
Remember, the ends do not justify the means, and just because there is a good ends, does not mean that sin is not involved. For example, look to the rules involved with a just war: it doesn’t just have to be a just cause that leads us to act. But consequentialism would suggest that is all that is needed. Now I would agree, in the case of the person asked whether or not there are Jews around, the best answer is “No.” But this does not mean, even if it is the most prudential response, that there is no culpability or sin involved with such an act. That is one of my basic points here, and in other places: we can be put in situations where even the right answer includes some guilt, whether we put ourselves in them or if others do. It’s two different issues: what ought we to do, and what is the guilt incurred from such an action. Just because we should do X doesn’t mean, as a result, everything about X is perfectly acceptable. And it is that aspect which is not acceptable which makes it a sin (and this, again, is addressed more later, via Lombard/Augustine).
After what I say later is presented, we still might not agree. But I do think my position holds value, especially in relation to what I present from Lombard. But then we will explore this question further at the end, when I do my concluding post, since I try not to talk about Nazis per se when addressing Lombard (since they were not in his mind when he wrote). Don’t let me forget it (though I think others won’t let me forget, either).
Henry Karlson,
Thanks. Your subsequent reply seems to help some.
Regardless, I continue to believe that not only will your series on Lombard (hopefully, touching more of their several profound theological aspects and even further explication as to their significance, etc.) prove of great value here but their immediate application to practical matters (both present & past), as those discussed, will prove equally, if not, even more valuable.
Excellent!