Two Traditions on Lying and Deception in the Ancient Church

TWO TRADITIONS ON LYING AND DECEPTION IN THE ANCIENT CHURCH l]HE TEACHING ON LYING and deception that the Western Church has received comes to it from Augusme , who was himself formed by the Scriptures. Augustine 's position, which is delineated at length in the treatises De mendacio and Contra mendacium, is relatively well known and has been analyzed by several writers,1 but it bears repeating here. The De mendacio, written in 395, is the more generic of the two treatises. Although the author was not perfectly satisfied with this work on account of its obscurity, and was minded to remove it from circulation,2 he nonetheless did not do so, nor did he in fact ever retract any of it. Augustine begins by acknowledging the complexity of the topic that he is about to address, and he immediately removes from the discussion the joke whose obvious untruth is understood and accepted by all.3 He defines the person who lies as one" who has one thing 1Cf., e.g., Louis Thomassin, Traite de la verite .et du mensonge (Paris 1691) pp. 1-74; Franz Schindler, "Die Liige in der patristischen Literatur," in Albert Michael Koeniger, ed., Beitroge zur Gesohiohte des ohristliohen Altertums und der Byzantinisohen Literatur: Festgabe Albert Ehrhard zum 60. Geburtstag (Bonn/Leipzig l!l22; repr. Amsterdam 1969) pp. 426-433; Bernard Roland-Gosselin, La morale de Saint Augiistin (Paris 1925) pp. 127-141; L. Godefroy, in Dictionnaire de Tneologie Oatholique 10.l (1928) 558-560; Thomas Deman, Le traitement soientifiqiie de la morale ohretienne selon Saint Augustin (Montreal/Paris 1957) pp. 39-40; Anne Marie la Bonnardiere, "Le dol et le jeu d'apres Saint Augustin," in Forma Futuri: Studi in onore del Cardinale Michele Pellegrino (Turin 1975) pp. 868-883; Sissela Bok, Lying: Moral Choice in Public anJ, Private Life (New York 1978) pp. 32-46. 2 Cf. Retract. 1.27 (CCSL 57.87-88) ., s Cf. De menECEPT10N 5$1 over, we would be hard put to find in Christian antiquity an example of someone who, recommended to the Christian faithful , practiced truth-telling with all the rigor that Augustine demanded and with any of the tragic consequences that he indicated might befall one for so doing. Augustine himself can only think of a certain bishop Firmus of Thagaste, who refused under torture either to lie or to betray someone's hiding place in time of persecution.94 We may risk saying, in any case, that the more widespread view in both East and West, until the time of Augustine, was the one that permitted occasional deception. After him, indeed , the West embraces his teaching, but it appears to have had little if any impact at all in the East. It is Augustine, then, who must introduce his position into already occupied territory. And Augustine's position is really a new one, for the prohibition of lying and deception pronounced b;Y the Scriptures and the Fathers previous to him,95 including even the Fathers who accept deception, required him to elaborate and absolutize it. May these two traditions be reconciled? Does the position which justifies deception represent merely a. " legere divergence dans la ligne de la tradition," as Godefroy says in his article in the Dictionnaire de Theologie Catholique 96-the "tradition " being presumably the Augustinian doctrine? Despite the fact that the cases in which one may employ deception are carefully restricted by the Fathers who discuss the matter, despite the fact that the persons who tell the charitable lie or practice the gracious deception are saints or hierarchs, i.e., despite the very tempered quality of the deception at issue, there is no reconciling an absolutist position, however sympathetic it may be to the dilemmas of life (for Augustine was James of Edessa, engineered by Bishop Zakkhai of Thella, in Ps.-John of Ephesus (Patr. Orient. 19.268-273). 94 Cf. De mendaoio 23 (CSEL 41.442). 95 The references are virtually numberless; they begin with Didache 3.5 (SC 248.154); Ep. Barn. 19.7 (SC 172.204); etc. 96 Godefroy, 561. 532 BONIFACE RAMSEY, O.P. not unsympathetic to those dilemmas) , with one that is not. Augustine, to be sure...