Here are some thoughts on the morality of lying, particularly in extraordinary circumstances. Lying, as classically defined by St. Augustine, "consists in speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving" (CCC 2482, quoting St. Augustine). And, according to Augustine, lying is intrinsically wrong, i.e., it is never permissible in any circumstances: “It seems to me, however, that every lie is a sin, albeit there is a great difference depending on the intention and the topic of the lie” (Enchiridion, Ch. VI, par. 18). The classic problem case for this conception of lying is the Nazis-at-the-door scenario. You are living in Germany during the Jewish Holocaust. You are hiding Jews in your attic to protect them. Some Nazis knock at your door and ask you if you are hiding Jews in your house. What to do? On the one hand, you might think that lying is intrinsically wrong, and lying consists in speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving. So, you reason that you cannot licitly lie to the Nazis (i.e., you cannot licitly speak a falsehood to the Nazis with the intention of deceiving them). So, telling the Nazis that you do not have Jews in your house seems like it’s off the table. On the other hand, if you tell the Nazis the truth, they will arrest the Jews and send them off to a concentration camp. Needless to say, this would be very bad. So, we seemingly have a serious moral dilemma. One possibility to explore is to scrutinize the Augustinian conception of lying. There are substantive philosophical arguments both for and against the Augustinian view, but for this post I will restrict myself to some biblical considerations.
First, it must be stated that it is overwhelmingly clear that Scripture and Tradition are opposed to lying in general. But there is at least some biblical data that might lend some support towards the thesis that either lying is permissible in some circumstances or not every instance of speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving is an instance of lying. For instance, there is Rahab the prostitute. She is hailed as a great Old Testament saint in Hebrews 11:31 and is praised for her righteousness in James 2:25. Both of these are references to Joshua 2:1-21. In this account, there are Israelite scouts that are spying in Jericho. The king of Jericho finds out about this and sends men to look for them with a message from the king. Rahab, a prostitute living in Jericho, takes in the Israelites and hides them in her house. The king's men come to her house, and she tells them that she does not know where the Israelites are and suggests that they may have just exited the city gates. This scenario is virtually equivalent to the Nazis-at-the-door scenario. (A similar scenario occurs in Exodus 1:15-21 with respect to the Hebrew midwives). Rahab then professes her faith in the God of Israel and asks the Israelites to spare her and her family when Jericho is conquered. It is for her faith and actions here that she is praised in Hebrews 11 and James 2.
This would seem to indicate that she did not do anything wrong in speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving to the king's men. Otherwise, it would seem that her praise would be qualified in these passages, but it is not. But if she did not do anything wrong, then either lying is not intrinsically wrong or not every instance of speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving is an instance of lying. I think the latter is much more plausible. For lying is fundamentally opposed to the truth, and God is Truth (cf. John 14:6). So, lying is fundamentally opposed to God, and anything fundamentally opposed to God is intrinsically wrong.
But if not every instance of speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving is a lie, then Augustine's definition needs modification. One such modification that has been proposed by some Catholic moral theologians and philosophers (e.g., Janet E. Smith) is stated in the Catechism of the Catholic Church: "To lie is to speak or act against the truth in order to lead into error someone who has the right to know the truth" (CCC 2483). It should be noted that this is not doctrinally binding on Catholics. Both Augustinians and Thomists, for instance, would disagree with this conception of lying. With that being said, on this understanding, we can readily make sense of Rahab being praised for what she did. For it is plausible that the king's men did not have the right to the truth of where the Israelite spies were. Why? Plausibly because of the evil they intended to do with the truth. I think that probably everyone has a prima facie right to the truth, but such a right may be forfeited by having evil intentions with respect to the truth. So, these men, in virtue of intending to harm the Israelites, forfeited their right to the truth. So, because they did not have the right to the truth, Rahab did not actually lie even though she spoke a falsehood with the intention of deceiving.
There are a couple of responses that can be made to this. First, it is far from clear that the Catechism intends the foregoing definition to replace the classical Augustinian definition. Instead, the intent seems to be to merely supplement it. The evidence for this is that the Augustinian definition is stated immediately prior to the definition in CCC 2483: “A lie consists in speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving” (CCC 2482). The idea seems to be that a lie is not just speaking a falsehood with the intention of deceiving but also acting against the truth by leading into error someone who has the right to the truth. One implication of this would be that telling something that is true but that leads someone into believing a falsehood who had the right to the truth falls under the category of a lie. A possible biblical example of this would be Abraham—on multiple occasions—telling people that Sarah is his sister without also telling them that she is his wife (cf. Genesis 12:1-20; 20:1-16; 26:1-33). Now, what Abraham said was true. Sarah was his (half) sister. But she was also his wife. However, by telling people that she was his sister, his intent and the result was that they would form the belief that Sarah is not his wife. Now, assuming that these people had some sort of right to the truth that Sarah was his wife (which is certainly debatable), it follows that Abraham engaged in a lie, since he acted against the truth by leading into error someone who had the right to the truth. Another indication that the Catechism is not departing from the classical account of lying is that it seems to endorse the classical natural law account of lying as a perversion of the faculty of speech, which is intrinsically ordered towards the communication of truth: “By its very nature, lying is to be condemned. It is a profanation of speech, whereas the purpose of speech is to communicate known truth to others” (CCC 2485).
Second, I think it could certainly be argued that the case I've just presented rests on an argument from silence: Rahab is praised for what she did in Joshua 2, but she is not corrected for having done anything wrong. So, Rahab must not have done anything wrong. But perhaps Rahab is being praised only for her profession of faith in the God of Israel and for her effort to help His people, viz. the Israelite spies. Her lying was wrong, but her intentions were pure, and her faith was still admirable. Besides, Hebrews 11 and James 2 are focused on praising the Old Testament saints. Throwing in corrections to their moral conduct would be inconsonant with the intent of the text. Furthermore, St. Thomas Aquinas adds: "Some, however, are commended in the Scriptures, not on account of perfect virtue, but for a certain virtuous disposition, seeing that it was owing to some praiseworthy sentiment that they were moved to do certain undue things" (Summa Theologica II-II, 110, 3). So, perhaps Rahab is being praised for what she did even though it involved a minor offense (minor because of her pure intentions, which Augustine would certainly agree with).
I’ll end this post here without coming to any sort of definitive conclusions.
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