Derek: 00:00

This episode is a repeat from one of our previous episodes, and in it, I explore Augustine's works on lying and against lying. And I have quite a few quotes from him. Augustine wrote these works to, kind of explain how lying wasn't something that was okay to do, even in order to to catch heretics, you know, setting up a sting operation that involved as a means, of capture to lie and and trick other people, into exposing their network. Right? So we're gonna we're gonna focus mostly on Augustine and his quotes and kind of pull pull those apart and discuss why why he thought the way that he did.

Derek: 00:47

And and Augustine said that our motivation doesn't matter at all, and we're gonna get to see how he grounds that. I do also wanna add since, this season, you know, Bonhoeffer has been somebody who has been influential for me, particularly because, we've been I've had an eye towards the concept of discipleship, and Bonhoeffer is very big on that. And because I I talked a little bit about him, towards the end of season I'm sorry. Like, section 2 here on race. When I did Hitler's Mein Kampf episode, I talked a little bit about Bonhoeffer because, the episode released on the anniversary of his execution.

Derek: 01:28

And so Bonhoeffer is really influential for me. But, yeah, I found a quote from Bonhoeffer that, you always get have pause when you find people that you really respect who disagree with you. And, Augustine agrees with me, and that's a pretty big name. But Luther, who's in the tradition of Augustine, you know, he's he's a Lutheran, Bonhoeffer would disagree with me on truth here. So I wanna read you, Bonhoeffer's quote here and then just discuss it really quickly before we get into the episode proper.

Derek: 02:04

So Bonhoeffer says, quote, he dawns the halo of the fanatical devotee of truth who can make no allowances for human weakness, but in fact, he's destroying the living truth between men. He wounds shame, desecrates mystery, breaks confidence, betrays the community in which he lives, and laughs arrogantly at the devastation he has wrought and at the human weakness which cannot bear the truth. He says truth is destructive and demands its victims, and he feels like a god above these feeble creatures and does not know that he is serving Satan, end quote. Now my understanding, since I I didn't read the the whole context of this, but, I actually found this in the middle of of somebody else talking about the issue of truthfulness and Bonhoeffer. It seems like what Bonhoeffer is saying is, hey.

Derek: 02:54

Look. We can't be super moralistic. Jesus is is all about discipleship and us following him and living life in the real world. He isn't about some moralistic set of of rules. Now Jesus will always look like love.

Derek: 03:12

So but love isn't like a it's not a rule per se. Right? That might look somewhat different in different situations. So here, Bonhoeffer is saying, if somebody always adheres to truth, that's not gonna that's not gonna be loving. Like, you've that moralism actually turns love on its head.

Derek: 03:28

Because, if if your kid brings you a drawing and asks, how it looks or if you like it, There there are various levels of honesty that you can have there. If you say, no, it looks atrocious. What is that? That would be maybe the most truthful thing, like the full truth, but that would not be an appropriate truth. That would be something that would be so unloving.

Derek: 03:58

And so Bonhoeffer's like, well, certainly, we should not be fully truthful at all times in all situations. Like, that would be a problem. And so he he has an issue with truthfulness at all times, it seems. Now I wanted to address that because I I think, I think Augustine gets into that a little bit here. I think we get into that conversation just a little bit.

Derek: 04:24

But I think Bonhoeffer is making a mistake that so so many people make, and that's that when when we say that truthfulness is an ideal, we should always live out and always embody. That that means, like in I think it's it's not Liar Liar. Oh, what's the movie? The one with Ricky Gervais and, everybody tells the truth in that world. It's like, you watch that movie and you're like, that would be terrible if everybody told the truth all the time, if everybody just spoke what was on their minds.

Derek: 04:56

But what that is is that's a that's a conflating of, the the use of truth. Just thinking off the top of my head, this this is probably gonna be a terrible analogy, but you can make up a better one. I've known people, my father, who likes to smell really good, and he likes to smell so good. He just sprays tons and tons of cologne on him, and nobody can stand it. Takes this really good smell, and he, he overdoes it.

Derek: 05:26

Right? You could you can shower and smell really nicely. But then if you get, air fresheners that smell like your shower gel, and you get, cologne that smells like your shower gel, and hair like, you you could just get all of these and spray your clothes to smell like your whatever that smell is in your shower gel, Brute. You do all those things. All that good is actually gonna be really repulsive.

Derek: 05:54

So does that mean, that that, that smell is bad or that cleanliness is bad? No. It just means know know when to use it and how much of it to use. And, one of the things about truthfulness is that holding back information is not usually a bad thing. Like, that's not lying or being untruthful most of the time.

Derek: 06:20

Sometimes it is in certain situations with various authorities and such. But, holding back on on just speaking your mind is not an untruthful thing. It's not the same thing. And so Bonhoeffer, like a lot of other people, seem to just equivocate or, conflate this idea of of truthfulness, with, I don't know, with speaking your mind at all times. That's just not the case.

Derek: 06:48

There are always gonna be options to be silent. There's always gonna be options to joke and deflect. There are gonna be, lots of different ways that you can handle things. But you don't have to tell your kids, that that their picture looks horrible in order to be truthful because there are a lot of different angles that you can approach that from. Because you recognize who your kids are and what that means, and that picture is beautiful, for for from a certain angle.

Derek: 07:19

Now is it from the, the artistic angle? Is it beautiful, you know, from an art critic standpoint? No. You're not gonna go hang it up in in, the Louvre. Right?

Derek: 07:29

You're not gonna hang it up in some art gallery, but that's not the that's not the angle that you're judging their art on and that you're speaking truth from. You're speaking from the angle of a parent who finds it beautiful, that their child adores them and, is giving them good gifts that come from their heart. And that is beautiful. That is good for a 3 year old to be able to draw that kind of thing and to do that. So truthfulness, I I think a lot of times people try to kind of straw man it, not on purpose per se, but just because they, they don't really understand the nuances of the the conversation, and they they just think it's ridiculous to talk about always being truthful.

Derek: 08:13

Hopefully, Augustine, here in this episode, helps to clarify some of the things, some of the questions that maybe you still have. So enjoy the episode. Welcome back to the Fourth Way podcast. Today, I want to reflect back on a topic which I discussed in our season on consequentialism. In one of the episodes where I talked about the moral conundrum of lying, I had mentioned Augustine as being against lying for any reason.

Derek: 09:05

And I had seen some of his quotes on the issue, but since my case was more, mostly philosophical and it didn't really rely ultimately on his take, I'd never really read Augustine's full work. So I finally got around to reading his works though. Works, plural, which I didn't realize. He's got he's got a book called Against Lying and one called On Lying. And I actually didn't realize that they were were 2 different ones.

Derek: 09:34

So I just kinda stumbled on that. But anyway, I just finished reading both of his works online, and I wanted to double back on that issue, because I think consequentialism is always good to come back to, but also because I think out of most of the moral conundrums, the lying thing is probably the one that's hardest for us to stomach. It just seems crazy that we shouldn't lie to save somebody's life. It seems nuts. At least it it does to me, and it still does to me.

Derek: 10:14

And, admittedly, I can't say what I would do in a situation, where that came up. I would hope that God would would guide me accordingly and allow me to be be wise, and and, not devious, but whatever. Wise as a serpent in that situation. So I do recommend that you go back and listen to the episode online, listen to the season on consequentialism because that's gonna be an important foundation for the discussion today. But I will recap it just a little bit for, for those who might be interested.

Derek: 10:53

So in the season on consequentialism, I'd identified consequentialism as a a big problem for humans in general, but especially a problem for pragmatic American society. While Christians talk all the time about bemoaning moral relativism in society and we claim to have objective moral truth, we so often find ourselves compromising what we say are our morals in order to be effective. And that's just the ends justifying the means. That's not objective morality. That's situational or circumstantial morality.

Derek: 11:28

We oftentimes use metaphor or ignorance to cover over what we don't want to know morally and to excuse what we want to do immorally. Oh, Jesus didn't really mean what he said. That's hyperbole. And, certainly, Jesus does use hyperbole, but we seem to over apply Jesus' revolutionary teachings and then wonder why he doesn't seem very revolutionary to us. His actions were worth him getting killed 2000 years ago, but, you know, been there, done that.

Derek: 12:00

We we understand Jesus, and now his teachings aren't really something that people wanna kill us for. So the hard things that Jesus taught us, especially about wealth and sacrifice, we kind of turn those sorts of situations into conundrums or or metaphors and those sorts of things. For as black and white as we think are are as we think we are, our gray zone is pretty big, and I'm okay with grays usually. The problem is that our gray zone isn't where it should be and is instead conveniently placed over the areas of our lives that we don't want touched. We see this especially in areas related to, as I said before, our money, our wealth, comfort, and, convenience.

Derek: 12:51

So in season 2, we explored several examples of what we say are moral conundrums. We talked about ectopic pregnancies, MASH Baby, voting for an evil party or candidate, lying to save lives, and I think that's it. I think that's what we covered. In the episode on lying, I concluded that lying wasn't just something which could be excused for Christians. We talked about how if lying were moral, then we could have no confidence that God wasn't a liar.

Derek: 13:22

We differentiated between moral commands as morals which could be turned on and off, like telling your kid that they can use the stove while you're there so you can supervise, while when you're not there, they can't use the stove. We compare that type of command to moral imperatives. So moral commands versus moral imperatives, which, moral imperatives I defined as objective morals to which we are always obliged because these things directly tie to God's character and are immutable and eternal. So love. This is why love was such a big deal to Augustine.

Derek: 14:00

He recognized that in no matter and no matter what you did, even if it's killing somebody, that had to be tied to love. If it if it, broke the law of love, then it wasn't right. And so whereas the the nonviolent individuals before Augustine said, I can't kill somebody out of love, Augustine didn't change the law of love, but what he said is we can love people while we kill them, under under particular circumstances at least. So when we take a look at lying, lying directly contradicts a characteristic of God, his truthfulness, his purity. It is therefore morally imperative that we do not engage in lying.

Derek: 14:41

We looked at what options this left us with in situations like those in Nazi Germany where people were hiding Jews. And while untruth is against God's nature, I discussed the options of, deceit or silence. I knew that some people would contend the the issue of deceit, and I guess the jury is still out on that. I'd be willing to be, convinced otherwise. But it seems like the Bible gives us some pretty clear examples of God encouraging and using deceit himself.

Derek: 15:12

And so then I I discussed how deceit is not a qualitative thing. It's not a changing of information, but rather a quantitative thing. It's a giving of only a certain amount of information. And those in authority have the, have the moral ability to give more or less information to subordinates. Therefore, God can give people the amount of information he wants, and he can withhold other information.

Derek: 15:44

That's his prerogative. So deceit, I don't think is off the table morally because it's quantitative, not qualitative, and it has more to do with with authority. So a kid lying to his parents about where he was, yeah. The he is not an authority over his parent, so therefore, that deceit is immoral. But in other situations like seeing a decapitated body on the side of the road and having your kids in the car ask you, hey, daddy.

Derek: 16:13

What was that? And saying, the there are medical personnel on the scene, and they are taking care of the the victims. Right? Not lying. It is deceptive.

Derek: 16:26

I would consider that deceptive, but it might be information that those kids don't really need at that time. We closed out the episode on lying with examples of seeming lies from the Bible or clear lies from the Bible and discussed whether those were approved or not, and and we delved into that. So it's probably one of my favorite episodes that I've done because I think I think it goes against the grain, but I also think that there's so much, there's so much weight there, and it really you're able to unpack that. And to me, the evidence seems pretty clear that lying is wrong. And that issue just gets at the heart of consequentialism.

Derek: 17:10

Alright. So with that behind us, let's get into today's episode proper. Augustine's work online in his two books, Online and Against Lying. You should know that when we talk about Augustine's work online, these two books are slightly different, and I don't know that I really understand the nuances. I haven't, researched the books.

Derek: 17:32

I mean, my my reading list is just extremely long at the moment. So the fact that I was able to get to these books and read them, they're they're relatively short each, but the language is is a bit difficult. But the fact that I got to these is is a miracle. So I didn't have time to do, like, history research on them. But they they seem like they are written to, the one situation is pretty easy to understand.

Derek: 17:59

There's this guy who's writing to Augustine and and asking about certain methods to weed out heretics. Like, he wants to to know if he can lie to uncover these dens of heretics so that they can, you know, punish them and and get them out of the church. And Augustine is responding to that. The other one, I'm not exactly sure what the context is, but I, I definitely liked one more than the other. And I'm trying to remember which one it is.

Derek: 18:29

I think it was the against line, but I've I've only got a 50% chance that that's right. Whatever. He says a lot of the same things in each. I don't know that it's necessarily worth reading both of them. I like the one where he is responding to the guy about, persecution or, heretics.

Derek: 18:50

Augustine's answer to lying is that lying is always wrong. But he ends up identifying something like 6 to 8 ways in which a a lie could be told. And he kind of goes through these different scenarios and sort of argues with himself, which I kinda like. Like, he goes kinda back and forth and gives rebuttals, and and that's exactly the process that that I go through. I have arguments with myself all the time.

Derek: 19:18

I'll I'll talk to my wife, and I'll, I'll say, what do you think about this? Like, I already have a rebuttal to that, but I wanna know what you think. So Augustine has these has these various ways in which a lie can be told. For example, I can tell a lie which does me good, and it does another harm, like a criminal who frames a different person for the crime. I could tell a lie that doesn't do me any good, but seeks to do good for another, like telling someone on the street that they look beautiful.

Derek: 19:49

You know, cheer somebody up. Make them have a good day. Augustine is going to identify all of these, all of the ways that he he mentions as wrong. Though there are times when he writes in a way which makes it seem that he's really struggling with that conclusion. For instance, in both works, he brings up the issue of Sodom and Gomorrah.

Derek: 20:11

And he says that when the townspeople wanted to rape the angels, he sympathized with Lot's willingness to throw his daughters out to the mob to be raped instead. So that I mean, let that sink in. That's that's kinda crazy. But Augustine saw the raping of Lot's daughters as a lesser evil than should a mob rape those of the same gender. And he assumed that they're of the same gender.

Derek: 20:35

I've also heard other people say that the, if you if you listen to Matthew Varnes on homosexuality, his, one of his arguments about what was particularly bad about the sexual sin of Sodom, which, is only highlighted in a in a couple passages. A lot of the other passages highlight the, the injustice, to the poor and and their gluttony and stuff. But on the on the passages that emphasize the sexual immorality, Matthew Vines would say that the issue here is actually more of a Genesis what is it? Genesis 6 type issue, where it's, they are kind of doing, like, the Nephthalim thing, where the the people of Sodom are trying to have sex with other beings. It's not, you know, because an angel is an angel a man?

Derek: 21:30

Maybe they they thought they were the appearance of men, so therefore, it's considered homosexuality. Whatever it is, That anyway, that would be another discussion. But Augustine assumes that these angels are men and assumes that the problem is that Sodom wants to sodomize these men. And so he's, like, when when Lot considered throwing his daughters out, he's, like, I kinda get that. I get why Lot wanted to do that because, hey, he'd be prevent preventing a much greater evil.

Derek: 22:01

And it could also have something to do with the fact that in the in the Middle East, when you had guests, you were extremely responsible for them. So I don't know how hospitality plays into Lot's, responsibility for his guests. But as a father, I would think that he has quite a lot of responsibility to his kids. But then again, it's patriarchal, women, whatever. So now Augustine doesn't approve that Lot did this, but he said that he understands.

Derek: 22:32

And there are some times where where he uses this and he he kind of talks about lying in a similar manner, where it's like, it seems like this would be a lesser evil, but it's still not good. And we we can't participate in that. And I'll give you some quotes later where Augustine essentially says, hey. Look. You're not responsible for preventing other people from sinning because that's their sin.

Derek: 22:57

You your job is to make sure that you don't sin. Now the places where Augustine seems to to have the biggest issue is different than probably where we would. When it comes to somebody dying, Augustine doesn't seem to struggle all that much from what I remember with with lying. It's like, well, no. You don't you don't lie.

Derek: 23:18

The things that seem to bother Augustine, the thing that seems to bother Augustine the most is when it comes to these things, I think he calls them defiling sins. So if you were going to be so let's say you, a man, were going to be raped by another man, and you could lie to get yourself out of that situation, especially if that lie is not gonna hurt anybody, Augustine has a real big problem with saying not to lie. Just the thought, like, he's like, oh, you'd be you'd be so defiled, like, these defiling sins. And and that seems to be his biggest hang up. So it is interesting that, you know, some people might argue that Augustine, isn't, like, 100%, oh, yes.

Derek: 24:02

Never. And I'm I'm passionate about never lying. He does kinda waver slightly, in in his debate with himself, but it's over completely different areas of the moral spectrum than what we would have problems with. Not that any of us would want to be, in his words, defiled, but, yeah, because he gets into other defiling sorts of things too. It's not just homosexuality.

Derek: 24:31

Yeah. Point is, Augustine stands firm always that lying isn't justified even in in the area that's hardest for him to comprehend. In light of Augustine's ultimate conclusion, I want to pull out some quotes from from his works. And some of them are pretty extended, and, I'm just gonna read them anyway. And I'll I'll quote and end quote so that you can follow along.

Derek: 24:59

Also, I will put these quotes in in the show notes so you can read them, because the language makes it somewhat difficult. Alright. So here we go. In the first quote, Augustine is going to pit truth against falsehood. It's essentially the character of God issue we talked about in our recap.

Derek: 25:21

How can we lie if untruth is antithetical to God? What is especially important here is that Augustine recognizes that even if we can't see any possible downside to our lie, participating in a lie does something to us. In our commingling with falsehood, something happens to our soul and our character. It pits us against God. What I find especially interesting about this concept is that you see the same thing from black voices in regard to racial oppression.

Derek: 25:51

Frederick Douglass and MLK both talked about the bondage of white oppressors. These white oppressors were in bondage by their choice to hate and participate in evil. They recognized, while black people were enslaved in some ways, even under literally with Frederick Douglass and and figuratively with MLK, really their white oppressors were enslaved too, which is a very biblical concept of being enslaved to sin. Now that's hard for us to imagine in terms of lying, particularly with little white lies, and and maybe there's bondage to a lesser degree, but participating in that which is counter to God is bondage. So here's Augustine's quote.

Derek: 26:38

Quote, of lies are many sorts, which indeed all, universally, we ought to hate. For there's no lie that is not contrary to truth. For as light and darkness, piety and impiety, justice and inequity, sin and right doing, health and weakness, life and death, so our truth and lie contrary the one to the other. Whence by how much we love the former, by so much ought we to hate the latter. Yet in truth, there be some lies which to believe does no harm, although even by such sort of lie to wish to deceive is hurtful to him that tells it, not to him that believes it.

Derek: 27:22

So, Augustine, to to tack on one part, I didn't kind of preview there. You know, he's saying that, sometimes lies, if you if you believe a lie, it might not be harmful to you. It might be a harmless lie. Like, if I say, do I look fat in this dress? And you say, no.

Derek: 27:39

Well, you just lied, but, you know, that might not do me any harm. But it could do me harm if I am overweight and I need to and that affects my health, then you have basically facilitated comfort for yourself by refusing to tell me truth and, cause me to confront something that I don't wanna confront. Or at the same time, it could be feeding my vanity. I mean, that that lie could have serious ramifications in my life, especially if it's a repeated lie, and it's it's something that that mars my soul. But, ultimately, there are lies that we're told, which really don't affect us, doesn't harm us.

Derek: 28:25

But the person who tells it, it does harm. It does damage to their soul. Alright. Let's move on to another quote from Augustine. In pacifist circles, Augustine is famous for his inner disposition of the heart idea.

Derek: 28:43

Basically, Augustine says that one can kill somebody else, and if the slayer is appropriately authorized, like, being a soldier for the state, the state has appropriate authority, then the killing is fine so long as his heart has love for the victim. Now this is in part why Augustine has a pretty rigid qualification that that we, especially Americans, don't have today, because we can shoot an intruder that comes into our house. But Augustine says that, you know, if somebody comes into your house to harm you, he's like, I can't imagine any scenario where you can kill out of love because there's gonna be fear or hatred or there's gonna be something involved that causes you to kill. You're not gonna be able to do it in a sterile fashion, in a fashion that is disempassioned. Whereas, if you kill from the state and the state says, hey.

Derek: 29:37

Look. We we figured out that this is a just cause. Go do that. And he says, oh, well, if they just tell me to go do my job, then I'm just doing a job, and they must be right. And I don't really have hatred towards this person or this group.

Derek: 29:52

So, yeah, I can go kill out of love. Now that that is, like, so ridiculous that you to think that you wouldn't have hatred for other people or other groups or that, you know, when you're in battle, you don't have fear and all of these things that would that would cause you to kill, not out of love. But Augustine is just trying to say, hey. Look. If there are any circumstances where you can kill out of love, the only way I can see it is if you're fighting for the state.

Derek: 30:18

You got a chance. But he recognizes that the disposition of the heart, even when you kill, it has to be in love. It took me by surprise then when Augustine speaks in several places that while motive can change the severity of the sin, a wrong is still wrong even if it's in lesser degrees. In the first quote in this this series here, Augustine explains this in terms of thievery. He says the following, quote, some man will say, so then any thief, whatever is to be accounted equal with that thief who steals with will of mercy, who would say this?

Derek: 30:58

But of those 2, it does not follow that any is good because one is worse. He is worse who steals through coveting, though he who steals through pity. But if all theft be sin, from all theft we must abstain. For who can say that people may sin even though one sin be damnable, another venial? But now we are asking, if a man shall do this or that, who will not sin or who will sin?

Derek: 31:26

Not who will sin more heavily or lightly, end quote. So Augustine is just saying, hey. Look. Stealing is always wrong. Doesn't matter if you do it out of mercy like Robin Hood, steal from the rich, give to the poor, or if you do it out of, a heart that covets.

Derek: 31:43

It doesn't matter. It's all wrong. Now one is more wrong to steal out of coveting as opposed to stealing out of mercy is more wrong, but just because one's more wrong than the other doesn't mean that they're not both wrong. So sin's a sin. And Augustine is relating this to lying, but, again, me coming from a nonviolent standpoint, then I I think, well, why did you throw off then the the 300 years of of nonviolence in, in Christianity and and try to excuse it as an inner disposition of the heart?

Derek: 32:17

So, anyway, I I just thought that was interesting. But Augustine goes on to give another example, specifically using Peter's betrayal. He says, quote, apostle Peter had that in his heart, which he had on his lips when he denied Christ. Surely, in that denial, he held the truth within and uttered the lie without. Why then did he wash away the tears, the denial, which he uttered with his mouth, if that sufficed for salvation that with the heart he believed?

Derek: 32:50

Why, speaking the truth in his heart, did he punish with so bitter weeping the lie which he brought forth with his mouth, unless because he saw it to be a great and deadly evil, that while with his heart he believed under righteousness, with his mouth he made no confession unto salvation. So let's take the concrete example of Peter here. Augustine says, look. Peter was a disciple of Christ. I mean, clearly, in his heart, he followed and loved Christ.

Derek: 33:19

So when he denied Christ with his mouth, what's the big deal, Peter? Why are you crying? Like, you know what you really believe. What you said was a lie. It didn't match what was in your heart.

Derek: 33:31

But Augustine is saying that it doesn't matter what was in Peter's heart because he uttered a lie. Right? He uttered a falsehood. He uttered this thing that was that was problematic. That was a betrayal.

Derek: 33:47

So the the this inner disposition of the heart doesn't get you out of the sin of lying. It doesn't matter what your intention is. Augustine moves on from here to point out the hypocrisy and intuition involved in all this justification that we tried to do for lying. In Against Lying, Augustine is writing specifically about the issue of how to handle heretics. He points out to his friend that we cannot lie to route out heretics because lying is never justified.

Derek: 34:20

Augustine proves this point by showing us how ludicrous the logic goes with other sins. Augustine says the following. Quote, why then do not route out heretics in order to their being caught by the flesh committing lasciviousness in adultery, and yet think right to route them out by mouth committing fornication and blasphemy. For either it will be lawful to defend both the one and the other with equal reason, that these things be therefore said to be not unjust because they were done with intention of finding out the unjust. Or if sound doctrine wills, not even for the sake of finding out heretics that we should have to do with unchaste women, albeit only in body, not in mind, assuredly, not even for the sake of finding out heretics, wills it that by us, albeit only in voice, not in mind, either unclean heresy were preached or the chaste Catholic Church blasphemed.

Derek: 35:19

And I love this. I I use this same concept when it comes to to violence, where I ask why in war is it okay to murder, to kill? Let's let's take out the the pointed expression, to kill. Right? That's a a thing that would otherwise be wrong is fine.

Derek: 35:39

But to rape in war, you know, to to mess with the enemy's mind, to subdue them, to suppress them, to demoralize them, rape is wrong. Augustine says the same thing with lying. He said, okay. So you want to get rid of some heretics. And you're saying, what's the big deal of telling a lie?

Derek: 35:58

Would you say the same thing about committing adultery? Would you say, hey, look, I'm you know, I'm gonna sleep with one of the leaders of this of this sect so that I can get in into the organization, and then I can get the names of everybody of every heretic and we can get rid of them. You'd say, oh, no. That's that's fornication, with the body. He says, well, okay.

Derek: 36:18

So what? If you fornicate with your body but not with your mind. If your if your mind has the intention, all rights to root out these heretics, then so what? Why not fornicate? He said, you know why you don't fornicate because it's wrong.

Derek: 36:32

It's a problem. It's a sin. And so what you're basically saying is I'm gonna fornicate with my mouth, you know, not with my mind. Right? My my heart's right.

Derek: 36:39

I'm trying to root out heretics. I'm not I'm not lying for a bad cause. And Augustine says, ridiculous. You recognize the intuition of, of holiness and not sinning in these other situations, but, you know, you you backtrack on this. So Augustine uses our intuitions with these in these other areas to highlight the problem with lying.

Derek: 37:04

And, again, I would reiterate that I think you can do the same thing with with killing. So Augustine goes on from here and continues his thoughts, and he explores a deeper problem that this duplicity, this, this viewing of lying is okay, but these other things is wrong. He he shows us where this duplicity leads us, and it leads us to be moral relativists. While we modern conservative Christians claim to love objective morality, Augustine would call us out on our hypocrisy. Augustine says the following, quote, but he who says that some lies are just must be judged to say no other than that some sins are just, and therefore, some things are just which are unjust.

Derek: 37:48

Then which what can be more absurd? For whence is a thing a sin, but for that it is contrary to justice? Be it said then that some sins are great, some small, because it is true. And let us not listen to the stoics who maintain all to be equal. But to say that some sins are unjust, some just, what else is that to say than there be some unjust and some just iniquities?

Derek: 38:16

End quote. My opinion, Augustine is is spot on here. It's double talk to say that lying is a sin, but sometimes lying is a righteous sin. How can something be a a just injustice or a righteous unrighteousness or a good sin? Such moral language doesn't work with moral issues tied to the nature of God.

Derek: 38:40

However, Augustine notes here, as he does elsewhere, that this doesn't mean there aren't greater and lesser sins or greater and lesser degrees of a sin. If someone lied to save the lives of Jews in the Holocaust, I'd be happy that the lives were saved. Augustine mentioned something very similar with the Hebrew midwives saving the infants in Egypt and with Rahab saving the spies. While he doesn't condone their lies, he says that they clearly had faith in God and were moving towards righteousness and towards a greater good. They weren't blameless, and they should have been.

Derek: 39:13

God could have provided a way out of no way for them in their honesty if he had wanted. But there are clearly degrees of immorality here. So while in the consequentialist series, my goal is to help us see the true deep Christian values, my goal is not at all to be legalistic and harp on all sins. I pray that God's God moves us forward in the process of sanctification and that we could all one day be in a place where we could trust God enough with our lives to be blame blameless. But this isn't an ex an exercise in judgmentalism or legalism.

Derek: 39:48

It's about getting to know God more and designed to be more like him. It's about conformity to the image of Christ, which is our ultimate goal as Christians. Alright. So let's get to the big question that I know we all have. We can understand the philosophy and theology behind lying so far, but what about reality?

Derek: 40:09

What about, when life happens? What happens when we're finally faced with lying to save a life? Do we refuse to lie? And if so, why? Here's Augustine's short answer.

Derek: 40:21

Quote, commit not thou a great crime thine own, while thou dreadest a greater crime of other men. For be the difference as great as thou wilt between thine own and that of others, this will be thine own, end quote. I think that's so succinct and beautiful. We are responsible for our actions. We can't control what other people do, and, we don't want to cause people to sin, but it's not our responsibility to stop others from sinning and to do so especially by sinning ourselves.

Derek: 40:58

I tell my kids this all the time. We are not culpable for the evil someone else does, especially if it requires us to do wrong. If a terrorist holds my family hostage and tells me to murder 1 of my kids or he'll murder them all, that is not on me to kill 1 of my kids. If I refuse to murder 1 of my kids and the terrorist then kills them all, that is not on me. That's on him.

Derek: 41:25

Even though I could have prevented it, assuming that the terrorist was telling the truth, that's that sin is on him. Now Augustine gives 2 specific examples for us to chew on here in regard to this. First, he tells of someone who tries to get you to fornicate, or she'll kill herself. Right? I've never had this problem, and I don't know that anybody else ever does.

Derek: 41:54

If somebody is that attractive and compelling of a person, that somebody says that they'll kill themselves unless you fornicate with them. Nevertheless, Augustine, maybe if if any of the church fathers had a one track mind, maybe Augustine did. At least it seems this way, and from what little I know of his background, probably persisted. But Augustine's like, hey, I you know, I've got this problem. People tell me that they're gonna kill themselves if if I don't fornicate with them.

Derek: 42:21

So, what's his response? If you refuse to have sex with someone, are you then responsible for their subsequent suicide? Here's his quote. Quote, for if a lewd woman crave of you the gratification of her lust, and when you consent not, she perturbed with the fierceness of her love should die. Will chastity also be a murderer?

Derek: 42:45

Or truly, because we read, because we read, we are the sweet savor of Christ in every place, both in them which are saved and in them which perish. To the one indeed, a save, a savor of life unto life. To others, a savor of death unto death. Shall we pronounce even the savour of Christ to be a murderer? But for that, we being men are in questions and contradictions of the sort for the most part overcome or wearied out by our feeling as men.

Derek: 43:16

For that very reason has the apostle also presently subjoined, and who is sufficient for these things? A second similar example that Augustine gives is there's this man who's really frail. His son's off in battle, and news has come to you about his son, and the man wants to know if his son is still alive or if he has died in battle. Now you know that the news let's just say you know somehow that the news, 100% is going to cause this man to give up on life and die right then and there. He's gonna have a heart attack right in front of you.

Derek: 43:49

Are you responsible to lie in order to prevent his death? Nay, for these persons who are so enamored of this life that they hesitate not to prefer it to truth, that a man may not die, say rather, that a man who must sometime die may die somewhat later, would have us not only to lie, but even to swear falsely, To wit, that lest the vain health of man should somewhat more quickly pass away, we should take the name of the Lord our God in vain. And there are among them learned men who even fix rules and set bound when it is a duty, when not a duty to commit perjury. So again, clearly, whether it's, a woman who's gonna commit suicide, if you don't fornicate with her, or a man who's gonna die if you give him some bad news, lying is not on the table. Maybe silence, maybe deception, depending on your your position and what you think about deception.

Derek: 44:45

But lying is not on the table for a Christian in terms of morality. Okay. So I think that's a a pretty good look at some of the main concepts from Augustine in his his work against line. In all of this then, we are going to come back to the conclusion from our original episode online. Does all of this mean that we always have to straight up tell the truth to everyone?

Derek: 45:16

You look fat in that dress. Your son is dead. I'm not going to have sex with you because you are not married, and quite frankly, you never will be because you disgust me. The Jews are right over there behind that false bookshelf. No.

Derek: 45:32

Of course not. Not lying doesn't mean not being shrewd. Beyond simple truth and lie, we have at least at our disposal silence and gentle speech. But I would also argue that in at least some cases, as with hiding Jews against Nazis, we may even have deception as a legitimate means of action. There may be cases where individuals do not have the right to the full truth.

Derek: 46:02

Now, obviously, if you're in the Nazi regime and you are subordinate to the Nazis, technically, they have governmental power over you. But I would argue that perhaps at this point, God's, God's authority would be conflicting with their authority since they're trying to do a great evil. And so for you to not give them the full truth might be a prerogative that you have. That I I would be willing to discuss that point and maybe retreat from that point, but it's at least something that I think needs to be considered. Alright.

Derek: 46:37

So what is the point of all of this? Obviously, since Augustine agrees with me, I'm right. That's really the ultimate point of this episode. Just kidding. That's not at all the point.

Derek: 46:51

If it were, then I'd be wrong about nonviolence, and, I don't think I am. So there were a few important reasons I thought it import, necessary to circle back around to to an episode like this. First of all, on a podcast about nonviolence where Augustine is a big name that leads the church away from nonviolence, I think it's important to recognize more of his teachings. And that's important for a number of reasons. It it's particularly important here because some of his rationale against lying, I think, undermines his rationale for using violence.

Derek: 47:26

And so being more familiar with his work, can be helpful for us to see overlap with nonviolence and argue against him. But secondly, I also like talking about Augustine because he really isn't he's, like, maybe a gateway to state violence, but he's still really conservative in terms of it. And and I want to remind people of that, So I I like an opportunity to get to talk about Augustine because he is very different from Second Amendment American Christians. Very different. So familiarity with Augustine is important.

Derek: 48:07

Another reason that I wanted to have this episode is because Augustine bridges a gap. If I use Chrysostom or Nazianzus or John of Damascus, I probably won't get Protestants on board. I'm speaking, mostly to the Orthodox at that point and the Catholic with with at least 2 of those. In this podcast, I really do want to speak to everybody, but my major experience is Protestant. And Protestants know so little church history, and the church history that they do know has been cherry picked.

Derek: 48:47

And there are only a handful of names that they revere. So let's see. Augustine and Aquinas. And if I was technologically savvy, I'd just play crickets for the next 30 seconds. But, yeah, that's pretty much it.

Derek: 49:03

Augustine. Aquinas isn't even really an early church father. You just don't really have have people that the that most Protestants like, obviously, people in seminary and stuff, but most Protestants skip from Augustine to Luther. That that's pretty much it. So Augustine really bridges the gap.

Derek: 49:27

He's somebody he's not gonna be as popular in your Orthodox Church, but in terms of the Orthodox already have a what I feel like is a more balanced view of violence, where whereas they view it as an evil, but a necessary evil, and so they'd repent of it. At least on paper, that's my understanding. So they they really don't embrace violence like we in the West do. And I feel less of a need to talk to them, but even more so, Augustine bridges just it just bridges a gap, especially with Catholics and Protestants. Now for an issue like this, there's really not a gap that needs to be bridged with the Catholics because in terms of lying, the Catholics are on board.

Derek: 50:14

I mean, they recognize that lying is no good ever. On paper, they recognize that at least. I mean, if you talk to your average Catholic, I don't know that they would know that or accept that, but, yeah, the Catholic church recognizes lying as a sin. The third reason I wanted to circle back around to this is because consequentialism is a huge issue. I think it's important to come back to to the issue of consequentialism with great frequency.

Derek: 50:44

Since I was able to tie it into an early church father and really dig into this issue, I'm hopeful that it will help those steeped in consequentialism to have their eyes open to it a little bit more. So, yeah, that's why we came back to this issue, and I hope it was it was insightful. I wanna start to close out with a quote from John Howard Yoder because it it sounds so much like what Augustine is saying here, and really Yoder was the Augustine on the topic of consequentialism, the modern Augustine on the topic of consequentialism that got me to see it. And so when I see this in Augustine and I recognize, oh, Yoder didn't just come up with this stuff. Like, there there is a long history of the church fighting against consequentialism.

Derek: 51:33

Even if in our own ways through through various time periods, we embrace we embrace consequentialism in different areas and we need others to point that out to us. Like, we need Augustine here with lying, and like Augustine in the Constantinian era might have been able to use us to be able to to see his flaw with with violence. So here's a quote from Yoder. Quote, one final note about the lesser of 2 evils argument. There are evils everywhere, and there will be as long as this world stands.

Derek: 52:06

What the Christian seeks to avoid is not suffering evil but committing evil. If we ask, which is worse, war or slavery? Perhaps to some mind, slavery would be worse. But the question is, which is worse for me to do, kill or be a slave? The answer is simple.

Derek: 52:25

The sin my enemies commit is not my first consideration. Loving them is, end quote. Yeah. Yoder Yoder echoes what Augustine said. The sins of my enemies are not mine to control, though if I can help them to do the right thing, I will.

Derek: 52:45

My sin is my own, and I need to take care of myself. Judgment begins in the house of the Lord. Right? Well, I've talked long enough. I hope revisiting this topic was beneficial for you.

Derek: 53:00

Check out Augustine's books, and I think I'm gonna have a, a link to an online version of at least one of his books that should be free. Yeah. So links in the show notes, and I think that's it. So that's all for now. Peace.

Derek: 53:22

And because I'm a pacifist, when I say it, I mean it.