A. A Lie is a Sin

12. In this question the conclusion that a lie is a sin is commonly held by everyone.

13. They are persuaded by Augustine’s reasoning in his book Against Lying, “It is stupid to believe him who is permitted to lie.” But there are many people we must believe, otherwise a joint human life sharing thoughts and affections of mind would be abolished. Therefore, we must believe people, and it is not permitted to lie.

14. But the reason for this is set down in different ways by different people.

For some say [William of Auxerre] that for this reason a lie is necessarily a sin because it necessarily turns one away from God, who is truth, and a lie is against truth.

15. But against this is that a lie does not immediately oppose the first truth but the truth of some thing that the speaker is lying about. Therefore, just as malice opposed to some created good does not necessarily turn one away from the first uncreated good, so neither does a falsity opposed to any truth not pertaining toAdopting the reading from Q ‘impertinenti’ and not the ‘in particulari’ of the Vatican editors. ¹⁰ the first truth turn one away from the first truth.

16. In another way it is said [Aquinas] that an act is called good or bad from its object in the genus of morals, and a genus is taken from something potential, and therefore is it potential with respect to its differences. But the first thing through which an act is constituted in the genus of morals (so that it can then be further determined through its circumstances as through differences) is the object. For over and above the goodness of nature, which an act has from its quiddity, the first thing that determines it so that it is quasi-potentially and materially moral, is the object. So as to the issue at hand, it is said that an act bad in its genus can never be good, for no additional circumstance can take away the malice that it has per se from the object, for every other circumstance presupposes the object. But lying is an act bad in its genus, because it concerns matter disagreeing with the act. For the matter agreeing with an act of speaking should be true or believed, and ‘being true’ is opposite matter in the case of a lie.

17. Against this:

The matter for speaking when one believes everything one says is false is not more undue or illicit than ‘a man innocent and useful to the republic’ is illicit matter for killing. But when these latter conditions are in place on the part of such illicit matter (namely a man), killing such a man can become licit, namely if God revokes the commandment ‘Thou shalt not kill’ (as was said in d.37 n.13). And not only licit but meritorious, namely if God commands one to kill, as Abraham was commanded to kill Isaac. Therefore, by similarity or by the argument ‘a minori’, speaking words one believes to be false can become licit if the commandment is revoked that seems to be about not deceiving one’s neighbor. For the commandment about not lying is not more binding than the commandment about not killing; for it is a lesser evil to take a true opinion away from one’s neighbor, or occasionally to generate in him a false opinion, than to take from him his bodily life; indeed, there is hardly any comparison between the two.

18. There is a confirmation, that if lying necessarily got its malice from the fact that it concerns the sort of matter it does, then lying is not prohibited by a commandment of the second table, because in the second table only things bad to one’s neighbors are prohibited. But, according to you in this opinion, lying is not only bad because it harms one’s neighbor, for then (as argued [n.17]) it would be a lesser evil than killing, and it would be possible, or more possible, for it, like killing, not to have the idea of evil. So it would be against a commandment of the first table. But this does not seem probable, because lying does not immediately turn one away from God, just as neither does the opposite act [sc. telling the truth] immediately have God for object (when speaking of some indifferent truth).

19. Further, if someone who says ‘he is running’ were deceived and believed it to be true, his act of speaking concerns the same matter as it would if he were not deceived and believes it to be false. But when he is deceived and believes what he says to be true he does not sin. So there is no malice there from the object that the act concerns.This criticism does not apply to Aquinas’ way of understanding the object of an act of lying, since for him the object includes the intention to say other than what one thinks. Scotus seems to hold, nn.20-21, that this way of understanding the object of an act conflates two different things. ¹¹

20. In a third way it is said [Bonaventure] that ‘lying’ in its very idea states a bad intention, because it states an intention to deceive. So although some acts, which do not include an evil intention, could sometimes be good from some good circumstance, yet an act that includes in itself an evil intention can never be good because it formally includes an evil ‘willing’. So it is in the issue at hand.

21. This view can be expounded as follows. Although a positive act and malice are not something per se one, either in fact or in concept, yet a name can be imposed on it that does not signify only the act or only the deformity of the act but the whole thing at once. It is like the name ‘adultery’ which is imposed to signify not only the natural act of intercourse but the deformity of its being with another’s wife. And the name ‘theft’ is not only imposed to signify the receiving of something but also to signify the taking of what belongs to another against the will of the owner, and of any superior owner there may be. Such totalities, which are introduced by such names, do not seem able to be good, but what the substrate is of them can be without the relevant deformity (namely an act of intercourse or of receiving something). So it is in the issue at hand. Although the speaking of such and such words, whatever they signify or do not signify, could be without sin, yet the speaking of them with knowledge of the opposite, and consequently with the intention of deceiving, cannot be without sin, for this includes the substrate act along with the circumstances necessarily accompanying or deforming the act. The assumption is plain, because the words ‘I do not know him’ and ‘I will be a liar like you’ were spoken by Christ [John 8.55] but not assertively. Besides any Latin words whatever and however false can be pronounced by a Greek without sin.