# Are there exceptions to Moral Absolutes?



## T.A.G. (Dec 31, 2009)

Reading Kant it got me thinking...

If the Bible says that you shall not lie...what if it is to save someones life from a terrorist or something of that nature

Also where does say one like Rahab come into the picture for this discussion?


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## T.A.G. (Dec 31, 2009)

perfect! Thanks!


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## Philip (Dec 31, 2009)

Was lying in Rahab's case actually a violation of the ninth commandment? The wording of the commandment is "bear false witness against thy neighbor." Does this untruth constitute "false witness"? I'm not sure that it does.

Silence in this case would amount to an admission of what is suspected.


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## larryjf (Dec 31, 2009)

When we bring up an instance where we either sin in one way or another we are starting from an illegitimate presumption - that we can perform an action without any stain of sin.


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## LawrenceU (Dec 31, 2009)

All that and by definition an absolute is unchanging.


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## T.A.G. (Dec 31, 2009)

I agree with your conclusion, and the thread was very long so I could not find your answer but what did you do with Rahab?
I also liked someone saying, if your willing to lie to save a life where does that stop? How disgusting must the sin be? Most would stop at the murder level or rape level etc.


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## MMasztal (Dec 31, 2009)

The Bible also teaches us to submit to the authorities. Therefore, if one were living in Nazi Germany, would it then be incumbent on him to disclose all knowledge of the locations of Jews if the "authorities" mandated it?


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## Philip (Dec 31, 2009)

"An unjust law is no law at all" ~Augustine.

First, the problem is that most here are assuming Kant's statement that a moral imperative must be across the board without exception, however I submit that I can think of few actions that are prohibited across the board.

Let's take killing: in general, killing is wrong--unless it happens to be self-defense, defense of innocents, or in time of war. Might we be able to apply the same criterion to lying?

Let's even take this to the next level: can a Christian be involved with intelligence-gathering, which relies on spies, who lie as part of their job. If it's wrong in that circumstance, then it is wrong to have anything to do with it--which would preclude Christians from military or diplomatic service since the military and department of state rely heavily on intelligence agencies like the CIA. If we're going to say that all moral imperatives must be comprehensive across the board with no exceptions, we either have to preclude most civil service, or we have to qualify the imperative enough to allow for such activities.


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## T.A.G. (Dec 31, 2009)

there is a difference between murder and killing


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## Philip (Dec 31, 2009)

And there's a difference between false witness and lying. False witness would be unjustified lying just as murder is unjustified killing.


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## Confessor (Dec 31, 2009)

P. F. Pugh said:


> Let's even take this to the next level: can a Christian be involved with intelligence-gathering, which relies on spies, who lie as part of their job. If it's wrong in that circumstance, then it is wrong to have anything to do with it--which would preclude Christians from military or diplomatic service since the military and department of state rely heavily on intelligence agencies like the CIA. If we're going to say that all moral imperatives must be comprehensive across the board with no exceptions, we either have to preclude most civil service, or we have to qualify the imperative enough to allow for such activities.


 
To take it even a bit further, is it wrong to perform a pump fake in basketball?


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## Andrew P.C. (Dec 31, 2009)

Some of the cases you might face are circumstantial. Given certain details and facts of the situation alter how you respond. One thing is for certain though: if you are in a situation that you just don't know, do not go against your conscience because then you would definently be sinning.


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## Confessor (Dec 31, 2009)

After reading through the other lying thread and organizing some of my thoughts, here is my result. Pardon the length, please, as there are many issues involved.

(1) There are clearly examples of morally justified deception. A pump fake in basketball is not immoral. Outflanking an enemy in a war is not immoral. Pretending to be nerdy so a seductive co-worker will no longer pursue one in adultery is not immoral. Therefore deceit in itself cannot be condemned as immoral.

(2) A strict distinction between verbal and non-verbal deceptions cannot be made; it cannot be seriously held that spoken lies are universally forbidden although some non-spoken lies are not. For:
(a) There is not such a moral distinction between words and actions. If it is wrong to communicate a false proposition to someone by means of speech, then some distinction must be made to show why it is not wrong to communicate it by some other (non-verbal) means. To assert the distinction without establishing it is to engage in arbitrariness.
(b) There are clearly examples when a spoken lie is not immoral. If one were to look outside to see rain pouring and react by saying, "It's a great day," one would obviously not be sinning.
-In other words, there's a distinction between _spoken_ and _implied_ propositions. What is important is whether these _implied_ propositions (which most often, but not always, align with the spoken) are deceptive. Once the communicated propositions (i.e. implied propositions) are identified, then the moral reasoning can continue. But the distinction between verbal and non-verbal communication is unhelpful.

(3) It is true that, as Christians, we are obliged to follow God's revealed will and leave His secret will to Him, but first, we cannot be ridiculous in denying obvious causal relationships (e.g. it is extremely likely that the Nazis would kill both the householder and the Jews if the householder were to be silent), and second, to use this as an argument against justified deception is to beg the question. The argument is not whether it is permissible to break God's law, but whether all instances of spoken deception are in fact violations of God's law.

(4) It is never the case that one must choose the lesser of two evils, i.e. in which one is forced to choose a sin of a certain degree. This would imply that God is forcing someone to sin (different from decreeing that someone sin), which is contrary to His nature (James 1:13). Therefore, in such examples as the Nazis-at-your-door ones, it must be understood that there does exist _some_ sinless outlet.

(5) In Exodus 1:19-20, following the midwives' lie to Pharaoh to preserve the lives of Hebrew children, it says that God blessed them, and it definitively implies that He blessed them because they lied. Their lie is recorded in v. 19; in v. 20 it says, "Therefore God dealt well with the midwives" (KJV). To say this is not a blessing of a verbal deception requires gymnastics. Similarly, in Rahab's situation (Joshua 2:4-5), the lie was the crucial event of the entire mission. The lie that she spoke was central to the act for which she was commended in James 2:25. If the lie was conducive to the act for which she was commended, and on which the entire mission lay, then how could James note her faith working in this situation? If this lie was a sinful example of "the ends justifying the means," then the entire situation was a terrible example of faithfulness.

(6) The sixth commandment, particularly with respect to self-defense, can be helpful to guide us in better understanding the ninth. When we are defending ourselves, the principle taught by that commandment is essentially that we should take the minimum amount of force necessary to overcome our assailant. There is a certain amount of physical harm which is progressively permitted in order to protect life, depending on the severity of the situation. Likewise, it is not unreasonable to say that, depending on the severity of the situation, a certain amount of _deception_ is permitted, and even obligatory. Returning to the Nazis/Jews example, if it is reasonable to suppose that silence will not reveal the Jews' position, then that is the maximum amount of non-truth that is warranted -- I would go so far as to say that telling the truth in such a situation would be _sinful_. Further, if it is reasonable to suppose that untruths need to be spoken to conceal the Jews' position, then that amount of deception is warranted, and also obligatory. Just as it is sometimes obligatory to kill an assailant, or to disobey one's parents, so also it is sometimes obligatory to speak an untruth. I would thusly contend that the position that all verbal untruths are universally forbidden has the same relation to the ninth commandment as outright pacifism does to the sixth.

(7) Since it is wrong to be conducive unto others' sins (cf. Psalm 50:18), it would therefore be wrong to give wicked men information with which they can harm others. This would provide evidence for the fact that telling the truth can be wrong in certain situations. Moreover, where there are only two possible communicated/implied propositions ("There are Jews in my house"; "There are not"), i.e. when silence is implicitly an affirmative answer, it would be _morally obligatory_ that one speak an untruth.

(8) This is _not_ a proposal that certain laws have to be broken in order to retain others. That would contradict (3) and (4) above. It is rather a proposal to carefully analyze the hierarchy of God's law, to understand its intricacies. Moral absolutism is not necessarily moral simplicity. Certain _exemptions_ of God's moral law (in which various amounts of physical harm or deception are permitted, and even obligatory, in various circumstances) do not constitute _exceptions_ of His law, in which His commandments actually cease their function or applicability.

(9) In almost all instances, deception (both verbal and non-verbal) is forbidden, and therefore the fact that some deception is justified should not alter one's behavior too much. I am not trying to justify the absurd amount of wickedness that comes forth from most of my fellow college students' mouths. It is precisely because lying is wrong in all normal circumstances, only justified rarely, that the Bible can forbid lying in general (i.e. without making any qualifications as to when deception is justified): Lev. 6:2; 19:11; Psalms 31:18; 40:4; 52:3; Proverbs 6:17; 10:18; 13:5; Hosea 10:13; Nahum 3:1; Zephaniah 3:13; Ephesians 4:25; Colossians 3:9; 1 Timothy 1:10; Revelation 21:8; etc.; etc. But this cannot be taken to be a _universal_ rather than _general_ precept, lest we presume that pump fakes in basketball are sinful and that God "therefore" blessed the midwives and Rahab for their sinful behavior.

I want to re-emphasize (9). The fact that some verbal deception is permissible has almost no impact on our daily lives. It is extremely unlikely that any of us, myself certainly included, are speaking more truth than we ought to.


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## T.A.G. (Jan 1, 2010)

what do you say then to the atheist who says that if we are getting morality from the immutable character of God and God does not lie nor is it in His nature to lie then how do we justify lying. Could God lie to us for a just purpose, for if just lying is not sin then what would be wrong with God doing it? The skeptic could say that this is another reason why we can not use scripture in ethics because it is not ok to lie and then it is ok to lie...what do you say to these things?


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## Confessor (Jan 1, 2010)

T.A.G. said:


> what do you say then to the atheist who says that if we are getting morality from the immutable character of God and God does not lie nor is it in His nature to lie then how do we justify lying. Could God lie to us for a just purpose, for if just lying is not sin then what would be wrong with God doing it? The skeptic could say that this is another reason why we can not use scripture in ethics because it is not ok to lie and then it is ok to lie...what do you say to these things?


 
If we use some common sense when reading the Scriptures, we would understand that the condemnations of lying (cited in (9) above) are not referring to the obviously justified uses of deception, e.g. basketball pump fakes, joking/sarcastic statements, etc. Likewise, we can understand that when it says God cannot lie, it is not saying that Jesus would never have done a pump fake in basketball, or that Jesus would never state an untruth in sarcasm. The lying mentioned in those verses is obviously the immoral kind of lying, the lying which occurs most of the time by humans. _That_ is what God would never do, for _that_ is inconsistent with God's nature.

If the atheist finds this unreasonable or thinks it to be a twisting of the text, then that's his fault for misinterpreting. He would be in the same boat as the unbeliever who adamantly asserts that 2 Chronicles 16:9 contradicts God's incorporeality.


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## Claudiu (Jan 4, 2010)

Joshua said:


> A lie is a lie is a lie. Here's a good thread on that. http://www.puritanboard.com/f50/moral-absolutes-lying-45873/


 
Oh yes I remember this thread!


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## Zenas (Jan 4, 2010)

"You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." -ESV

"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour." -KJV

"You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." -NKJV

"You shall not give false testimony against your neighbor." -NIV

"Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. " -ASV

"You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor." -NASB

The moral command involved in each of these translations is a prohibition against false witness against another person. This appears to be a legal term and I suspect the command has something to do with the necessity of credible witnesses to establish the guilt or innocence of someone accused of murder. I don't read it to be a command against lying in all contexts. Kant is wrong.


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