Just Lies: Finding Augustine's Ethics of Public Lying in His Treatments of Lying and Killing

JUST LIES

Finding Augustine’s Ethics of Public Lying inHis Treatments of Lying and Killing1

jore_458 661..698

David Decosimo

ABSTRACT

Augustine famously defends the justice of killing in certain public con-texts such as just wars. He also claims that private citizens who inten-tionally kill are guilty of murder, regardless of their reasons. Just asfamously, Augustine seems to prohibit lying categorically. Analyzingthese features of his thought and their connections, I argue that Augus-tine is best understood as endorsing the justice of lying in certain publiccontexts, even though he does not explicitly do so. Specifically, I showthat parallels between his treatments of killing and lying along with his“agent (auctor)–instrument (minister)” distinction, in which God is thetrue agent or “author” of certain acts and humans are merely God’sinstruments, together imply that he would regard certain instances ofpublic lying as permissible and even obligatory. I buttress my argumentby examining several key but neglected passages and by responding tovarious objections and rival interpretations. Throughout, I challengestandard interpretations of Augustine’s ethics of killing and lying andseek to deepen our overall understanding of these dimensions of histhought. In so doing, I contribute to ongoing discussions of public andprivate lying and to the task of relating Augustine’s thought to contem-porary debate and deliberation on war, killing, and lying.

KEY WORDS: Augustine, just war, lying, killing, deception, state, “agent–instrument” distinction, public, private

1. Introduction: “A Great Question”

Magna quaestio est: How does Augustine’s recognition of the per-missibility and necessity of killing in just war contexts relate to his

1 Throughout this article, “public” refers to the condition of acting (and the actsproduced) in one’s capacity as an officially designated representative of God or agoverning authority: “bearing an office of public authority” (personam gerentes publicaepotestatis) (De civitate Dei, 1.21). The term does not in itself imply any normativeevaluation (for example, a killing may be public and unjust). “Private” refers to thecondition of acting (and the acts produced) in any capacity other than the “public” sounderstood. I intend no evocation of modern “public–private” distinctions.

JRE 38.4:661–697. © 2010 Journal of Religious Ethics, Inc.

apparently absolute prohibition of lying? In what follows, I suggest howAugustine could have responded to this question and its implicitchallenge to the consistency of his thought. Many have claimed thatAugustine prohibits lying categorically, that this prohibition is funda-mental to his thought, and that a consistent follower of Augustineshould never lie.2 In this article, I argue, instead, that Augustine is notbest understood as forbidding lying absolutely and, although he neversays so explicitly, that he would permit and require lying in certaincircumstances. I aim to show that my argument is at least Augustin-ian, faithfully interpreting his texts to answer on his behalf a questionhe could have asked but did not, but I also do much to demonstratethat my argument is, moreover, largely Augustine’s—the synthesis ofan argument implicit in his thought.

In the first half of the paper I show how our magna quaestio growsout of tensions internal to Augustine’s work and present what I takewould have been his response. In the paper’s second half, I address arival attempt at harmonization and answer several potential objec-tions. Throughout, in addition to showing how Augustine would haveresolved the tension in question, I also seek to expand interpretativeoptions, bring key but neglected texts to the conversation, and deepenour overall understanding of these dimensions of his thought. I beginwith a sketch of Augustine’s treatment of lying in De mendacio (DM)and Contra mendacium (CM).3

2. Augustine on Lying

Augustine defines a lie as a “false signification (enuntiationemfalsam) put forward with will-to-deceive (voluntate ad fallendum)” (DM4.5).4 Initially, it seems that there are two components to this definition

2 Among others, Paul Griffiths 1999 and 2004, especially 230, and Alain Epp Weaver2001 endorse these interpretations.

3 All Augustine quotations are my own translations. References correspond to stan-dard chapter and paragraph numbering. I have benefited from and checked my trans-lation against other available translations. Literature on Augustine’s treatment of lyingis expansive, but among the best are three articles in which Thomas Feehan carefullyanalyzes DM and CM regarding, respectively, the definition of the lie, the character ofthe prohibition, and the details and significance of Augustine’s examples of lying (Feehan1988, 1990, 1991). Griffiths 1999, 3–13 is also admirably clear. While CM (420 C.E.) waswritten many years after DM (395 C.E.), and in order to address the Priscillianistcontroversy, there are no differences between the two texts that are relevant for ourpurposes.

4 He does not say that only this is a lie but focuses only on this kind of lie: “whetherthis alone is a lie is a different question . . . regarding this kind of lie . . . let us investi-gate” (DM 4.5–5.5, my emphasis). In CM a lie is a “false signification (falsa significatio)with will-to-deceive (voluntate fallendi)” (CM 12.26). Both enuntiatio and significatio

662 Journal of Religious Ethics

and that both must be present to constitute the kind of lie he intendsto evaluate, and that is correct—though in a somewhat complicatedway. The first component, “false signification” (falsa enuntiatio or falsasignificatio), is simple enough: a person signifies what that persontakes to be false. One “has one thing in mind and signifies the otherwith words or whatever kind of signs” (DM 3.3). The significationinvolved in false signification and lying need not be verbal; rather, itincludes any act of communication.5 The falsity in false significationconsists in falsity with respect to what the person doing the signifyingtakes to be the case, regardless of what actually is the case (DM 3.3).6There is, then, no “accidental” false signification; a person who falselysignifies necessarily has a “double heart” (duplex cor): “there is adouble thought: one, of that thing which he knows or thinks to betrue and does not put forward; the other, of that thing which heputs forward in its place, knowing or thinking it false” (DM 3.3, myemphasis).

The second apparent component in Augustine’s definition is thewill-to-deceive (fallendi voluntas), and here the aforementioned com-plication enters: we must understand the will-to-deceive criterion herein relation both to Augustine’s withdrawal of jokes and to the case thecriterion introduces. Since Augustine withdraws jokes (and similarforms of discourse) from consideration at the outset (DM 2.2), falsesignification necessarily entails a desire to deceive about what onetakes to be the case in relation to what one signifies that one takes to bethe case.7 This can make the will-to-deceive criterion seem redundant:

have to do with verbal and non-verbal communication. Enchiridion 6.18 accords with CMand DM, and, while perhaps gentler with those who “lie with will to help,” stillpronounces such lying sinful.

5 Below, I elucidate this point further. While DM’s and CM’s examples primarilyinvolve verbal signification, by referring to “whatever kind of signs,” Augustine explicitlyindicates that false signification and, thus, lying include non-verbal activity. Moreover, henowhere excludes non-verbal activity from counting as the kind of lying that interestshim. My use of “signification” honors Augustine’s understanding of false signification asincluding verbal, non-verbal, and “mixed” communication. I occasionally use “speech,”“talking,” or “utterance” as synonyms for “signification.”

6 He lies who “with will-to-deceive asserts something true which he does not think tobe true” (DM 3.3, my emphasis).

7 Augustine must be ruling out of consideration all joke-like discourse here (forexample, parables, fictional stories), otherwise he would leave the reader to drawdistinctions between various joke-like discourses with no guidance whatsoever—animplausible option given how seriously he views the issue of lying. His attitude towardjokes seems to be of the “we know one when we see one” variety. So, “not a joke” isactually his first definitional criterion for a lie: only if something is not a joke might itbe a lie. Paradigmatically, jokes involve signifying what one does not take to be true andone’s auditors know one does not take to be true and doing so with no attempt to deceive(for example, a priest walks into a bar . . .). Some jokes do involve a sort of desire to

Just Lies 663

if one intends to deceive one’s audience about what one takes to be thecase, what else is there to intend to deceive them about?8 There is,Augustine contends, the case itself. And the lie he wants to exploreinvolves false signification with a will-to-deceive about the case itself.

The will-to-deceive criterion thus removes from consideration situ-ations in which there is a discrepancy between (a) what one’s signifi-cation indicates one takes to be the case and (b) what one’s audiencewill take actually to be the case.9 In other words, it functions toeliminate cases in which there is disunity between what the audiencetakes someone to be signifying and what the audience takes actually tobe the truth, particularly cases in which the person signifying knowsthat the audience will believe the opposite of what she signifies is thecase. While Augustine sets aside all complications of this sort, he isespecially keen to rule out those in which “will-to-deceive is absent”(DM 3.4). These are situations in which someone “signifies a false thingin order not to deceive [about what the case is],” situations in whichone falsely signifies that ~P in order to get someone to believe,correctly, that P (DM 4.4).

To illustrate, Augustine introduces the case of the “skeptical friend”in which John knows that Sally will believe the opposite of whatevershe thinks John believes.10 Sally is planning a trip and John knowsthat route A but not route B is viable. If John wants to help Sally, hesignifies that route B is viable: he falsely signifies precisely because heintends not to deceive about which route is viable. If John wants tohinder Sally, he signifies that route A is viable: precisely to deceive herabout the route’s viability, he does not falsely signify but signifies whathe actually believes to be the case. This example serves to illustrate thevery kinds of cases that do not interest Augustine—cases that the

deceive; for example, when a rooster lays an egg on a hill, which side does the egg roledown? Because such communications are jokes (even if they involve deception), they arenot false significations or the sorts of lies Augustine intends to explore. Levenick 2004examines Augustine on joking.

8 We know it is not redundant because Augustine distinguishes between casesin which will-to-deceive is absent while false signification is present, and vice versa(DM 3.4–4.5).

9 Of course, Augustine may also want to alert us to other implications involved indistinguishing will-to-deceive from false signification—while leaving these unexplored.Also, regarding (a), as I explain in note 11, Augustine assumes unity between (i) whatthe audience takes someone to signify and (ii) what the audience takes someone to taketo be the case.

10 This formulation of the example is from Weaver 2001. Weaver, however, mistakenlyseems both to imply that falsa significatio does not include a will-to-deceive someoneabout what one takes to obtain (that is, duplicity in one’s signification), and thatAugustine is interested in defining the lie as such (57–58).


will-to-deceive criterion removes from consideration.11 After presentinghis illustration, he explains,

Whether a lie is sometimes useful (utile) is by far a greater and morecritical question [than whether or which of the above cases are lies]. It isopen to doubt whether he lies who [falsely signifies without] a will-to-deceive, . . . and whether he lies who willingly signifies something true inorder to deceive. Nobody doubts, however, that he lies who willinglysignifies a falsehood [i.e., something he takes to be false] in order todeceive: therefore, it is clear that a lie is a false signification put forwardwith will-to-deceive. Of course, whether this alone is a lie is a differentquestion. Meanwhile, regarding this kind (genere) of lie—which everyoneagrees is one—let us investigate whether it is sometimes useful to uttersomething [one takes to be] false with will-to-deceive [DM 4.5–5.5, myemphasis].12

Thus, to sum up: the will-to-deceive consists in the intent to deceiveone’s audience about what the case is, and the kind (genere) of lie thatconcerns Augustine consists in false signification with will-to-deceive.Having removed “skeptical friend” permutations from considerationwithout saying whether they count as lies, Augustine explains that hisreal concern is with the “much greater” question of the status oflies—understood as false significations with will-to-deceive—told for“good” or “useful” reasons.

In both DM and CM Augustine contends that there is no situationin which lying is morally permitted.13 About this, nearly all who havewritten about Augustine and lying agree. To my knowledge, the lonecontemporary dissenter is John von Heyking who claims that Augus-tine thinks that, “lying is not only permissible in certain circum-stances, but also required” (von Heyking 2001, 118). While I argue thatAugustine permits and requires lying in certain circumstances, my

11 Augustine is removing from consideration cases in which perlocutionary consider-ations would complicate analysis: cases in which one knows the audience’s believing“that P” does not follow from getting them to believe “that one believes or takes it to bethe case that P.” Additionally and importantly, his framing of the skeptical friend caseas involving false signification also removes from consideration the complexities thatwould obtain in a different sort of case: if there were a distinction between getting theaudience to believe “that one is signifying that P” and getting them to believe “that onebelieves or takes it to be the case that P”—those cases in which the latter does not followfrom the former (the case mentioned in note 9). Removing jokes from consideration alsobars this kind of complexity from obtaining.

12 Note that if, as some have supposed, Augustine thought false signification orduplicity were itself the evil proper to lying (for example, because of its use of speech todeceive about one’s heart), it is hard to explain why he does not go ahead and condemnthe one who falsely signifies in order not to deceive.

13 To be precise about my view I would add the word “private” before “lying” above.In DM and CM, without drawing the distinction, Augustine only speaks of private lying.

Just Lies 665

claims and reasoning are very different than von Heyking’s, and, in thefinal section, I briefly show the significant problems with his claimsand their difference from my own.

3. Just War Killing and Third-party Defense: Questions theTexts Invite

This section shows that Augustine’s endorsement of just war killingand prohibition of all private killing give rise to questions about hisaccounts of lying and just war killing and the relation between them.14

Specifically, consideration of these dimensions of his thought can leadone to wonder why Augustine permits just war killing but prohibitsprivate killing even when done in self-defense or in order to protect aninnocent third party.15 Indeed, consistency might seem to dictate thatthe very considerations that would lead him to permit or prohibit theone would lead him to deal likewise with the other. One way of tryingto solve this puzzle is to suppose that Augustine thinks human acts ofkilling are morally neutral in themselves and have their moral signifi-cance determined by the killer’s intention. Another approach contendsthat, whether Augustine considers killing “morally neutral” or not, hisunderstanding of the moral significance of intention in human acts ofkilling is itself sufficient to account for his divergent pronouncements.Drawing on texts like Contra Faustum (CF) 22.72–8, in which Augus-tine seems to emphasize the importance of intention to the moralsignificance of killing, both perspectives share the assumption that heprohibits private killing because it somehow entails evil intention onthe part of the killer, while just war killing does not. As a solution tothe puzzle, however, this explanation falls short.16

14 In contrast, one recent interpreter has argued that such questions do not arise fromwithin Augustine’s framework: Johnson 2001, 88–89.

15 There is consensus that Augustine permits just war killing and prohibits privatekilling even in self- or third-party defense (Markus 1983; Lenihan 1988, 1996; Holmes1999; Weaver 2001, 53; Johnson 2001, 91–92; and Smith 2007, 145). Speaking of privatecitizens who are permitted by earthly law to kill in self-defense, Augustine has Evodiussay, “[If they do kill] I do not see how they can be blameless. . . . The law does notcommand (cogit) them to kill, but permits (relinquit in potestate) them to. . . . How arethose free of sin before [God’s law (in distinction from earthly law)] who, for the sake ofthose things which ought to be despised [that is, earthly goods or physical life], arestained with human blood?!” The “Augustine” character then “lauds and approves” thispoint (De libero arbitrio 1.5.12–13). Elsewhere, Augustine explicitly says that all non-God- (and, by extension, non-just-state-) sponsored killing is murder (DCD 1.21).

16 Note that at issue here is not whether some act of killing was intentional ratherthan accidental and whether that matters—it is agreed that does matter and onlynon-accidental acts of killing are under consideration. What is under discussion is whatsignificance, if any, a person’s reasons or ends—her intentions in that sense—have for


Specifically, if intention determined the moral significance of humanacts of killing, as these perspectives suppose, it would nonethelessremain unclear why Augustine would think (as proponents of theseperspectives are obliged to maintain that he does) that all killing doneby a private individual entails evil intention. Take a private citizen whoseeks to rescue a child who is being raped and murdered. At the level ofintention, what more can be asked of this rescuer? Yet, if he enters intocombat with and, as a last resort, kills the assailant, for Augustine hisact of killing is morally wrong. If human acts of killing have no inherentmoral significance and/or intention alone determines their moral char-acter, it is hard to see why private citizens are absolutely forbidden—even as a last resort—to kill an attacker in order to defend a neighborfrom mortal danger.17 Clearly, Augustine does not regard human acts ofkilling as morally neutral and/or their moral significance as dependenton intention alone—at least not in any straightforward way. Regardlessof the role intention plays in this aspect of Augustine’s thought,accounting for the divergence in his pronouncements on just war andprivate killing requires considering his distinction between private andGod- or just state–sponsored action.18

some non-accidental act of killing. Note also that (setting aside issues related tonegligence) for Augustine just as certain killings are accidental and therefore cannotcount as unjust; certain deceptions or lie-like activities are accidental too and thuscannot be lies or unjust. Death or deception may result from such acts, but the fact thatthey were accidental affects their moral status.

17 Insisting that, despite appearances to the contrary, the intention is actually evil insuch cases begs the relevant question: Why and how, apart from something to do withthe moral significance of the act itself, is it that no matter what one’s ends or reasonsare in some act of private killing they necessarily count as evil? Saying, for example, thatprivate killing is evil because the intentions it involves manifest inordinate love justraises the questions of why, apart from something to do with private killing itself (a) thelove counts as inordinate and (b) all private killing should count as manifestinginordinate love. If private killing is always wrong and always entails evil intentions, nomatter the other particulars of the act, then there is something morally significant aboutthe act itself.

18 Notwithstanding the anachronism, I use “state” to translate and correspond toAugustine’s conception of “res publica” as articulated in De civitate Dei 19.24. On thisconsciously non-Ciceronian formulation of Augustine’s, Rome, Babylon, Egypt, and “anyother nation (gentium)” counts as a res publica, notwithstanding their lack of true,Christian justice. While Robert Markus notes that the term can also apply to the church,in the sense I use it—in accord with Augustine’s primary usage—the res publica, unlikethe church, holds imperium, in the sense of political authority (Markus 1970, 63–69; onpolitical authority, 211–30). Despite the real differences between the political arrange-ment of Augustine’s day and our own, the features of the res publica that are relevantto Augustine’s discussions and distinctions treated in this article are sufficiently analo-gous to the state’s features for it to make sense to use that term here: doing so makesAugustine’s thought accessible without distorting it. For more on translating “respublica,” see Markus 2006, 37–38, 57, 63–64.

Just Lies 667

All of the possibly satisfactory explanations for why Augustinethinks that private killing in third-party defense is never permissiblewhile just war killing is depend on his distinction between privateaction and action undertaken with “right authority” (that is, God- orjust state–sponsored action). So, either (1) the private killer’s inten-tions really are good in third-party defense cases, but killing is suchthat the killer’s upright intention is necessary but not sufficient formaking it permissible, and well-intentioned right authority is addi-tionally necessary. Or (2) well-intentioned right authority is necessaryand sufficient to make killing permissible either: (a) by (i) “cancelingout” an individual’s apparently good but truly evil intention or (ii)“transforming” his evil intention into a good one, or (b) because anindividual’s intention, truly good or otherwise, does not bear on thepermissibility of the killing. Regardless—and this is the key point—forAugustine killing is such that right authority proves necessary to makeit permissible, and this is irreconcilable with the claim that the humanact of killing is morally neutral in itself and the claim that an agent’sintentions alone give it its meaning.

De civitate Dei (DCD) solves the puzzle of Augustine’s divergentpronouncements. It does so by clarifying that for killing to be morallypermissible God (or, by extension, the justly acting, rightly intentionedstate) must be the true agent and the human actor only the instrumentin an instance of killing:

The divine authority himself has made certain exceptions (exceptiones) tothe law that men are not to be killed. These are the exceptions: thosewhom God commands to be killed, either by a general law or by a distinctcommand to a person at a particular time. The one who, having beencommanded [by law or the distinct command], is responsible for thisservice (ministerium) does not himself kill. Instead, like a sword, he ismerely his user’s [God’s] instrument. For that reason [one’s being aninstrument], those who have waged war by God’s authority or who havepunished criminals with death, bearing an office of public authorityaccording to God’s law (i.e., the authority of the most just rule), by nomeans have acted against the law that says: “Thou shall not kill.” . . .Therefore, with the exception of the one who kills because a just law, ingeneral, or God, the font of justice, commands (iubet) him to kill, whoeverkills a human . . . is implicated in the crime of murder [DCD 1.21, myemphasis].19

19 Non autem ipse occidit, qui ministerium debet iubenti, sicut adminiculum gladiusutenti; et ideo nequam contra hoc praeceptum fecerunt, quo dictum est, non occides. Notehere that it is only “just laws that command killing” and not “just laws that permitkilling” that constitute an exception to the prohibition against murder. Whether DL 1.5is ambiguous, as Smith 2007 suggests, over whether laws that permit killing inself-defense are to be regarded as just, it is clear there that, regardless of the status of


Augustine says that, in cases of permissible killing, God or the justlyacting state (itself an instrument of God) is the true agent and theperson doing the killing (for example, a soldier) is merely an instru-ment and thus not really the killer.20 As he sees it, the commandment,“Thou shall not kill,” forbids all human acts of killing, defining them asmurder. Thus, for the human actor, only in virtue of his being aninstrument is the killing permissible and not an instance of murder.21

This agent–instrument distinction both explains Augustine’s insistencethat just war killing is permissible while private killing is not andestablishes these pronouncements as consistent.

In sum, supposing that Augustine thinks that the permissibility ofan act of killing depends solely on an agent’s intentions cannotadequately account for his differing treatments of just war killing andprivate killing in third-party defense. Conversely, the idea that heregards killing to be an intrinsically evil act for humans and/or toentail evil intention on the part of the human killer may explain his

those laws, any private citizen who kills nonetheless breaks God’s law: she sins and“bears the stain of human blood.” DCD and DL 1.5 are in harmony both on the point thatprivate citizens who kill violate God’s commandment not to murder and on the point thatthose commanded to kill by God or a just law do not. In any case, Smith himself notesthat however one understands DL, “Augustine [at least] subsequently repudiates anysuggestion that the Christian as a private citizen may kill even in self-defense” (Smith2007, 145). Also, while Swift 1973 argues that Augustine distinguishes between the workof soldiers and executioners with regard to issues related to punishment and guilt, heagrees that they together fall into the category of those who serve as God’s instrumentsbearing public authority, that they are alike in the sense that concerns us (375–78,especially n.12).

20 Also: “In [the just] war . . . people . . . must not be judged so much its authors(auctor) as its administrators (minister)” (Quaestionum in heptateuchum 6.10, myemphasis). Additionally, for our purposes, we need not worry about causality-relatedmetaphysical questions that might arise in connection to the notion of God as the trueagent of an action and humans as God’s instruments. However those questions mightplay out, agency here for Augustine concerns moral responsibility—it has to do with whocounts as the author of the act morally speaking, to whom the act belongs in that sense.

21 If we presume that individual killers can have upright intention, the logic ofAugustine’s argument and his idea, expressed elsewhere (for instance, Enchiridion 26:100–2), that God accomplishes justice even through those who will evilly, suggests thatthe person who performs the killing (for example, a soldier) need not himself haveupright intention (intending to justly serve God) for the killing to be just. If such aperson has evil intentions, the killing is not therefore unjust even though he isblameworthy for his bad intention. While I know of no evidence that Augustine requiredrepentance of soldiers returning from war, some have thought he did. If he did, the pointI raise above incidentally helps explain why he might have done so for soldiersparticipating in a just war even though he regards such soldiers as instruments: thesoldier would be repenting for any evil intention, lust for domination, cruelty, or the likethat he manifested in the war. Indeed, Augustine—especially near the end of his lifeif Carnahan 2008 is correct—might have thought it nearly inevitable that soldierswould succumb to such temptations to some degree. The possibility too that, despite

Just Lies 669

absolute condemnation of private killing even in third-party defense,but cannot by itself explain why or how killing could ever be permis-sible or required as he says it is. As we have seen, the puzzle’s solutionlies in Augustine’s agent–instrument distinction: killing is only per-missible when and because God or, by extension, the justly acting stateis the true agent.22

Like private killing, lying is impermissible even in extreme circum-stances or when done with “good” intentions or for “good” ends. Augus-tine explores just war or just state-sponsored killing relativelyextensively, if unsystematically. In contrast, he gives little, if any,explicit consideration to just “public” lying, that is, God- or juststate–sponsored lying in peace (for example, preventive espionage orinterrogation of dangerous criminals) or in just war contexts (forexample, feeding false information to the enemy or lying to gaintargeting information about the location of military facilities in orderto reduce civilian casualties).23 Simultaneously, Augustine says nearlyas little about private killing in third-party defense as about God- orjust state–sponsored lying, and as much (maybe even more) aboutprivate lying as about just state killing. Having examined the structure

appearances, a given war was not just and, thus, that the soldier was not an instrumentbut an agent of killing, might also help explain any insistence that returning soldiersrepent, although comments at CF 22.75 about a soldier’s duty of obedience may countagainst that hypothesis.

22 In CF 22, Augustine remarks that certain acts are “medio” and this is often tooquickly translated and understood as “neutral.” On this basis, one might think thatAugustine regards human acts of killing as morally neutral in the sense that the agent’sintentions constitute the act’s moral significance. This, however, is not what Augustinemeans by calling killing “medio” and is not his perspective in CF or DCD. Medio acts arethose acts the moral significance of which varies according to whether God or a humanis the act’s true agent. In the case of killing, a type of medio act, if God is the trueagent—if God commands it—it is always praiseworthy and is required for his humaninstruments; if a human is the true agent, it is always prohibited and evil (CF 22.73).For Augustine, consideration of human intention with respect to such acts serves only tohelp one discern whether an act not directly commanded by God is properly attributedto a human (and therefore evil) or to God (and therefore just). With respect to such acts,intention helps reveal the true agent’s identity but does not constitute the act’s moralsignificance. Indeed, that killing is always wrong for humans is not only consistent withits being medio but, given its propriety when done by God, necessary for its being so. Thisis the sense in which killing can be described as ‘neutral’ for Augustine. DCD confirmsthis: only because God, not a human, is the agent of an act of killing is it not an act ofmurder. All human killing, however, is murder. For my purposes, it is irrelevant whetherwe say that (a) killing is indifferent and fixed in its moral place based on whether Godor a human is the agent, or (b) killing is inherently evil for humans but permissible forGod; provided, in either case, that we understand that divine agency is the necessarycondition for the permissibility of any human killing and the criterion that aloneconstitutes human killing as permissible and not sinful.

23 All references to “just public lying” (or “just state–sponsored lying”) refer to thesesorts of cases, the parameters of which I do not further detail.


and logic of Augustine’s divergent pronouncements on private and justwar killing, we must ask: How do Augustine’s treatments of killing andlying relate and how, if at all, are they consistent? Since Augustinepermits killing in certain public contexts but absolutely prohibits it inprivate ones, what might that mean for his treatment of lying? Mightlying, like killing, while banned absolutely in a private context, bepermissible when and because one is an instrument of God or the justlyacting state? Far from being alien to Augustine’s work, these questionsarise from careful engagement with his treatment of these topics—andtheir answers promise to deepen our understanding of these dimen-sions of his thought.

4. Public Lying, Public Killing: An Augustinian Answer

In this section, I present a resolution to the apparent tensionsbetween Augustine’s treatments of lying and killing that, while some-what speculative, is exegetically grounded. The previous sectionsimplicitly began to make my case for finding a notion of just publiclying in Augustine. Here I make the argument explicit and marshal akey passage in support of my claims.

It is not clear that Augustine’s prohibition against lying entails orincludes a prohibition against God- or just state–sponsored lying. Thebasic argument runs as follows:

1. Augustine permits and requires public killing in the right cir-cumstances, but prohibits private killing, even in cases of third-party defense.24

2. There is something inherently wrong about killing for the privatecitizen insofar as: the act of private killing entails bad intention,even when one intends to protect an innocent third party, or noapparently good intention of the private killer can make hiskilling permissible; and the command of God or, by extension, theauthority of the just state is necessary for any killing to bepermissible.

3. In cases of just public killing, God is the real agent (whetherdirectly or indirectly through his representative, the state) andthe individual whom God directly or indirectly authorizes is onlyhis instrument: “The one who, having been commanded [by Godor law], is responsible for this service (ministerium), does nothimself kill: like a sword, he is merely his user’s instrument. Forthat reason [one’s being an instrument], those who have waged

24 Insofar as God commands killing, it is not merely permissible but obligatory andin certain contexts killing as an instrument of the justly acting state is obligatory (see,for example, Epistulae 189).

Just Lies 671

war by God’s authority or who have punished criminals withdeath, bearing an office of public authority according to God’slaw . . . by no means have acted against the law that says: ‘Thoushall not kill’” (DCD 1.21, my emphasis; and see, for example, CF22.75 and Quaestiones in heptateuchum 6.10–11). One’s beingsuch an instrument of God is precisely what excuses one from theguilt of killing.

4. DM, CM, and, to my knowledge, Augustine’s other writings donot, with the one exception we will treat below, examine the caseof God- or just state–sponsored lying. Augustine’s treatment ofpolitical public lying in DCD deals with Roman ideology andself-deception—activity that is as dissimilar from just publiclying as Roman persecution of Christians and libido dominandi-driven warfare is from just police or just war activity.

5. In the relevant sense, Augustine’s condemnation of the sorts ofprivate killing and private lying that we are tempted to declarepermissible are alike: the prohibitions are absolute; necessarilya private agent engaged in either activity cannot have “goodintentions” (or if she can, they do nothing to make the activitypermissible). Private killing thus seems inherently wrong inbasically the same way and sense that private lying does.

6. Since private killing and private lying are alike in the ways (5)details, if killing is permissible provided the just state in a justcause is the agent and the killer is only the instrument of thestate (and thus, by extension, God), or the killer is acting onGod’s command and is God’s instrument, consistency woulddictate that lying would be permissible in the same circum-stances.

7. There is strong independent corroboration of (6) in virtue of apassage I treat below in which, on an interpretation I defend asat least plausible, Augustine is obligated to endorse and declarejust an instance of public lying. Further, the passage clearlymanifests the same agent–instrument distinction and logic as histreatments of just war killing. Finally, the little evidence againstmy conclusions can be satisfactorily addressed.

8. Any attempt to resist this argument must, in addition to respond-ing to my textual evidence, show what is different about whyprivate killing and private lying for just ends are both absolutelyprohibited and why or how that difference makes just war (andother God-sponsored) killing permissible but not just state– (andother God-sponsored) lying.

In Quaestiones in heptateuchum (QH), Augustine defends Joshua’sdeceptive warfare wherein God commands Joshua to have his men


feign retreat in order to draw the enemy out of their city and into atrap (QH 6.10–11).25 This is the only case I know of in which Augustinetreats an instance of divinely authorized public deception in thecontext of a God-ordained—and therefore just—war. (There is oneother passage—whether what it recounts is best characterized asdivinely permitted or divinely commanded deception is debatable andinessential to my argument—that I will address after treating QH.)

Mentioning this passage, one interpreter claims that Augustinedefends Joshua’s ambush as just because it is not a lie (Weaver 2001,67). On this reading, while Augustine views the ambush as manifestingwill-to-deceive, he does not see it as involving false signification. Sincewill-to-deceive without false signification does not make for an Augus-tinian lie—so the interpretation goes—Augustine does not regard theambush as a lie, and thus his regarding it as just has no specialrelevance for understanding his views on lying. In this, the interpre-tation is correct: Augustine does explicitly refer to the ambush asmanifesting fallendi voluntas, he does not explicitly declare theambush to involve false signification, and both will-to-deceive and falsesignification are necessary for the kind of lie he says is prohibited inCM and DM. Yet, while Augustine does not explicitly say the ambushinvolves false signification, by the same token, neither does he in anyway deny that it involves false signification. In fact, based on histreatment of and remarks about the ambush and his conception of falsesignification, we have good reason to think this ambush is an instanceof Augustinian false signification—that Augustine, on his own grounds,is bound to regard it as such. Further, since it is clear that he regardsthe ambush as involving will-to-deceive, if on his own grounds he oughtalso to regard it as involving false signification, then this passageprovides independent verification of my overarching argument. Inparticular, it represents an instance in which Augustine allows for ajust lie and does so under the very conditions and for the very reasonsI delineated in preceding pages. In what follows, I aim to show thatthis interpretation is at least plausible. Nonetheless, even if my effortson that front prove unpersuasive, this passage still lends significantsupport to many of my overall claims in clearly depicting an instanceof just divinely commanded deception.

Immediately after recounting the ambush, Augustine notes that

It must be asked whether all will-to-deceive need be classified as lying;and if so, whether it is possible for a lie to be just, by which he whodeserves to be deceived is deceived: and if not even this lie is discovered

25 In a forthcoming article, I analyze this passage more fully than space allows here.It further substantiates the interpretation I offer and addresses questions the passageraises that are not strictly relevant to the argument here.

Just Lies 673

to be just [note: he does not say whether it is or not] it remains that bysome other [not “in addition,” but “different”] signification (aliquamsignificationem) this, which was fashioned as an ambush or deception(insidiis), might be referred to the truth” [QH 6.11].26

Unfortunately, he does not resolve these questions—indeed, theseremarks conclude his comments on the ambush. There are, nonethe-less, three things we need to note.27 First, as I mentioned above, heclearly classifies the ambush as manifesting will-to-deceive: having justfinished describing the ambush, it is the only thing he can be referringto when he asks whether every instance of will-to-deceive need beregarded as a lie. Second, the passage as a whole, its language, and,perhaps, even the way Augustine raises but does not try to resolvethese questions, indicate that he is entertaining, however inchoately ortentatively, the possibility that this is a case of divinely commandedpublic lying. Finally, in the last sentence in speaking of the possibilityof the ambush having some “different signification,” he seems clearly toimply that the ambush has or involves some signification—it musthave some signification for the different signification to be differentfrom. At the very least, it certainly shows him reflecting on the ambushin relation to signification, seriously entertaining the idea that theambush signifies, if not explicitly endorsing that position. Conse-quently, in exploring whether Augustine regards or is bound to regardthe ambush as false signification, I have strong textual precedent—Iam following his lead, walking through a door he opens. Nonetheless,my argument that on his own terms Augustine ought to regardthe ambush as involving signification—and, in particular, false

26 The meaning of the portions of the clause that I have translated as “it remains that(restat)” and “referred to the truth (ad veretatem referatur)” admits of at least twodifferent interpretations. Since none of the interpretive possibilities undercut or weakenmy argument, I have let that ambiguity stand in my translation and reserved discussionof the interpretive possibilities for a forthcoming article.

27 While the passage raises other issues, they do not bear on my argument. Inparticular, that he asks here whether all will-to-deceive must be considered a lie need nottrouble us. If someone wants to suppose that this ambush counts as a lie in virtue simplyof manifesting will-to-deceive, we would, on those grounds, have a clear case of Augustinedeclaring a public “lie” just. Of course, my interest throughout has been and remains inthe sort of lie that involves will-to-deceive and false signification. In particular, I wantto show that Augustine is obliged to view the ambush as a just public lie of this sort.Since he declares the ambush just and says it involves will-to-deceive, in order to showthat it counts for him as a just public lie, it remains for me to show that on his owngrounds he ought to recognize the ambush as an instance of false signification. Also, weshould note that the will-to-deceive criterion here, in the absence of explicit discussionof and pairing with false signification, necessarily functions to do more than rule outskeptical-friend cases from consideration. The use of that criterion in this way does notstand in tension with its role in CM and DM.


signification—need not presuppose or depend on his use of significa-tionem here. It can rest on other grounds.

Recall that false signification consists in one’s signifying—one’ssaying or communicating by words or signs—what one knows orbelieves to be false: it occurs when one “has one thing in mind andsignifies the other with words or whatever kind of signs” (emphasismine, DM 3.3). Famously, Augustine’s notion of what constitutes a sign(signum) or signification (significatio) is extremely rich and expan-sive.28 While we may doubt that the running away of an ambushsignifies anything, given his understanding of signification, Augustinehas good reason to regard this deceptive activity of Joshua and his menas a signification (significationem), and, as I just noted, he even seemsexplicitly to refer to it as such (QH 6.11). In what follows we will seewhy, on his own grounds, Augustine is bound to consider Joshua’sactivity an instance of false signification—and, because issued withwill-to-deceive, a lie.

In CM, Augustine claims that Jesus’s feigning to go further on theroad to Emmaus is an act of signification but not a lie. Walking withtwo disciples, Jesus feigns (finxit) to continue further on his way (CM13.28). To the disciples, his feigning is, of course, indistinguishablefrom his simply continuing on or seeming to intend to continue on: onlyhis intention not to go on, coupled with his intention to appear to go on,distinguish this as “feigning to go on” rather than “actually going on.”29

Given our understanding of signification, we might expect Augustine toargue that Jesus did not lie in this instance simply by denying thatJesus’s feigning signified at all: no signification, no lie, problem solved.Instead, Augustine claims that Jesus’s feigning is a signification and isnot a lie because it is not a false signification. Specifically, he says thatJesus’s signification is true: his feigning signifies that he will, later, goon to heaven as part of the mystery of the Ascension. As he sees it,“If Jesus had not signified (significasset) something instead (aliud) [ofsignifying that he was going on then and there] . . . then his feigningwould deservedly be judged a lie” (CM 13.28).30 According to Augustine,given his intention not to go on, Jesus would have been lying if hisfeigning had signified something like, “As I seem to be, I am going on

28 See, for instance, De Doctrina (2.1.1). However implausible we may find August-ine’s understanding of signification, what is relevant here is how he understands theambush and, specifically, whether on his understanding of false signification it counts assuch.

29 Augustine’s use of fingo, “feign,” indicates he does not regard the deception asverbal.

30 The idea is not that Jesus signified something in addition to signifying that he wasgoing on down the road, but that Jesus signified something other or instead of his goingdown the road.

Just Lies 675

now and not stopping.”31 To be clear, Jesus’s feigning counts as signi-fication for Augustine not because it happens to involve somethingtheological or heavenly or something along those lines. Instead, thefeigning signifies regardless, and only because what it signifies is true,and not what it might seem to signify, is it not false signification.

Many actions that we may think do not signify, Augustine thinks dosignify. Specifically, he believes they signify what they seem to suggesta person is doing or going to do, or what a person intends them tosuggest (for example, that “I am not stopping;” that “I will ascend toheaven”). Insofar as these actions are intended to signify—to causeone’s audience to believe—what one takes to be false, they are falsesignifications and, given a will-to-deceive, lies. In short, what we mightconsider a deceptive but non-signifying exploitation of someone’ssloppy inferential habits, Augustine considers a lie.

In QH’s ambush, we confront something strikingly similar to thecase above: ambiguous bodily movements are taken to signify, and thepossibility of false signification looms if their intended signification isdifferent from what the person signifying takes actually to be the caseabout his actions or what they seem to imply. Citing Joshua 8,Augustine recounts Joshua’s explanation to his men: “We will approachthe city . . . and we will flee from them . . . and they will say: ‘They arefleeing from us just as they did before (sicut antea)’” (QH 6.11). In aprevious battle with the same enemy, Joshua’s troops were overpow-ered, fled in a desperate effort to escape, and were massacred. The goalnow, Joshua says, is, by fleeing, to signify that they are fleeing as theydid before.32 Indeed, the ambush is predicated on their getting theenemy to think just this. Of course, when they fled before, they had nothought of signifying anything, much less an intention to lure ordeceive the enemy with false signification. Thus, to signify that theyare “fleeing as they did before” requires that they signify what theyknow is false: namely, that they are fleeing as they did before (that is,not intending to lure). They must, in short, feign to flee as before. In

31 I think there are problems with Augustine’s disconnecting the content of Jesus’ssignification so radically from what his audience could reasonably take him to besignifying (that is, what he seems to signify), but these problems are not relevant to theambush in which what Joshua intends to signify and seems to signify are united. Theremay also be problems with Augustine’s separating what the feigning is feigning to do(namely, keep going down the road) from what it signifies (namely, the Ascension).Augustine seems to reject the possibility that the feigning is a feigning to go down theroad, but a signification of something different. Nonetheless, he clearly thinks thefeigning could have signified that Jesus was going down the road had Jesus intended itto do so and this is the relevant point in relation to the ambush.

32 Given Augustine’s obligation to view Joshua’s action as signifying it makes senseto view what Joshua intends to signify as identical with what he wants his audience tobelieve.


contrast to Jesus on the Emmaus road, however, they stand in the verysituation that he would have if his feigning had signified that he wasgoing on then and there—the situation that Augustine says would havemade the feigning a lie. Joshua and his men signify falsely—acting soas to seem to be fleeing just as before even though they are not—and,as such, Augustine’s judgment must apply to them: their feigning is“rightly judged a lie.”

Having seen why it is likely or at least plausible that Augustine isobliged on his own grounds to view the ambush as an instance of lying,we can now see how QH’s treatment implicitly reveals the structure ofAugustine’s ethics of public lying—a structure identical to the one Iargued for on the basis of his treatments of public and private killing,private lying, and the relations among them. He explains:

Because God, speaking to Joshua, commands (iubet) that he set up . . . anambush, . . . we are reminded that this [that is, the ambush] is notunjustly done by those who fight a just war: a just man especially oughtto consider [employing] nothing [involved] in these matters, unless he towhom it is licit to fight undertakes just war, and it is not licit to everyone.When, however, a just war is undertaken, whether he succeeds by openfighting or ambushes, it is of no matter with respect to justice . . . With-out a doubt, this kind of war is just which God commands, in whom thereis no iniquity and who knows what ought to be done to whom. In this sortof war, the commander of the army or the people themselves must not bejudged so much its authors (auctor) as its administrators (minister) [QH6.10, my emphasis].

Note well that the justice of the ambush, not of killing, is what is underconsideration: “this [that is, the ambush] is not unjustly done by thosewho fight a just war.” Further, when Augustine says that outside thecontext of a just war one should “not even consider” doing “it,” he isreferring here to this deceptive activity, not fighting or killing.33 He isnot here primarily concerned to say to whom or under what circum-stance killing is permitted but to say to whom and under whatcircumstances deception or, as I have argued, lying is permitted—thisis the challenge the bibilical text poses for him. This passage from QHsuggests, then, that lying is permissible in the case of divinely com-manded action, just war, or relevantly similar public contexts and thatit is so precisely because the deceivers are merely instruments, andGod or, by extension, the justly intentioned state is the true agent ofthe activity. As I argued earlier, the structures and conditions that

33 We know this, for example, because he claims that only those who are alreadypermitted to fight are allowed to consider employing such deception: such people, ofcourse, are not considering whether to fight—they already are fighting. Instead, they areconsidering engaging in deception and false signification.

Just Lies 677

make killing permissible are precisely those that make lying permis-sible: God is the author; the human actor is his instrument. Simulta-neously, in keeping with what we have seen elsewhere, the passagemakes clear that such lying (or, at least, such deception) is prohibitedoutside the context of divinely command action, just war, or relevantlysimilar public contexts. Indeed, that this deceptive activity—independently of the killing it involves—is such that one should noteven “consider” much less do it unless authorized by God is yet anotherreason to think that Augustine understands or is obliged to understandit as a lie.34

Near the conclusion of DM Augustine remarks that “while yetenveloped in the skins of this mortality we have not the power todisplay (ostendere) our heart” (DM 18.37). All our fellow humans arethus dependent on what we can and do show them to know ourheart. While Augustine does not claim that we have a duty to showjust anyone our heart, he does claim that we must never intention-ally mislead another about our hearts by what we show them with“the skins of our mortality.” On his account, the ambushers use theirmortal skins, the hiddenness of their hearts—the very limits of thispre-eschatological state—not only to conceal something but positivelyto deceive their enemies about the truth in their hearts. When onedemurs from using verbal language, to know one’s heart one’s audi-ence is dependent on whatever signs one gives. While Augustinewould grant that there are cases in which nonverbal signs admit ofmuch ambiguity, this is not one of them: the ambush depends on thevery clarity of communication embodied in their feigning to “flee asbefore.”

5. The Case of Eighty-Three Different Questions

Aside from this passage in QH, there is one other passage whereAugustine reflects explicitly on a similar but not identical topic. WhileQH deals with divinely commanded deception and, as I have argued,lying, the other passage touches on divinely authorized deception.Importantly, Augustine’s focus in this other passage is not on deceptionper se but on the relation between God’s sovereignty and providentialgoodness, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the “evil” or “sins”that God commands or permits (Eighty-Three Different Questions (ET)53.2). As examples of this phenomenon, Augustine introduces the

34 The deception is prohibited qua deception, not, derivatively, because of the killingor fighting involved. Of course, it is not irrelevant that its context involves killing: thatcontext establishes this deception as not joke-like—not the relatively innocent, inconse-quential, or ambiguous deception of a mere game, for example.


pre-Exodus plundering of the Egyptians and its deceptions and theevents of 1 Kings 22 wherein God allows a “lying spirit” to speakthrough false prophets. An apparent statement in ET that God neverdeceives seems to challenge my claims about divinely authored lying.Recall the relationship between deception and lying for Augustine:lying involves will-to-deceive, but will-to-deceive need not entaillying.35 If there is no will-to-deceive whatsoever, there can be no lie.Thus, insofar as ET seems to claim that God never deceives, itchallenges the claim that Augustine endorses divinely authored lying,since for Augustine lying entails will-to-deceive in some form oranother. Put differently, my claim that Augustine endorses or is boundto endorse divinely authored public lying necessarily ascribes to himthe view that God deceives—the very claim ET seems to reject.36

In any case, ET’s apparent challenge comes when it says: “Godcertainly deceives no one by means of himself (per se ipsum), indeed, heis the Father of Truth, and Truth, and the Spirit of Truth” (ET 53.2).In context, however, we read:

Someone is much purer and closer to that best virtue [i.e., deceiving noone and letting one’s ‘yes’ be one’s ‘yes ’ and one’s ‘no’ one’s ‘no’] who,although he wishes to deceive the enemy, nevertheless does not deceivehim—unless by divine authority (auctoritate). God alone knows (or cer-tainly knows far more excellently and truthfully than men), what pun-ishment or reward each deserves. Therefore, God deceives no one bymeans of himself (per se ipsum). Indeed, he is the Father of Truth, andTruth, and the Spirit of Truth. Nevertheless, assigning suitable things tothe worthy . . . he makes use of the spirit according to the merit anddignity which is its grade . . . If someone deserves to be deceived, not onlydoes God not deceive that person by means of himself, but neither by aperson who already loves fittingly and persists to take heed that in hisspeech, ‘yes’ is ‘yes ’ and ‘no ’ ‘no’ [my empahsis, ET 53.1–2].

Consistent with my claims, this—at least the first sentence—indicatesthat even someone of the utmost virtue can and does righteously

35 This relation, of course, was why showing the ambush was a lie required showingit involved false signification and not merely will-to-deceive. Recall too my earlier pointthat for Augustine will-to-deceive is, at some level, implicit in all false signification. Also,if someone said that ET’s claims about God’s deceiving somehow did not bear on whetherGod has will-to-deceive, that would only remove ET as a potential challenge to my claimssince, given such a distinction, my claims and Augustine’s in QH and elsewhere outsideof ET would have to do with will-to-deceive rather than deception. Such an argument notonly has no merit that I can see but would, in addition, render ET irrelevant to myclaims. Thus, I proceed on the well-grounded and straightforward understanding thatET’s comments on God’s deceiving are not relevantly different than comments on God’shaving or exercising will-to-deceive.

36 Of course, in this respect, ET explicitly contradicts not just my claims but, as wehave seen, QH’s.

Just Lies 679

deceive the enemy by God’s permission and command. Further, we seeboth that God authorizes deception and does so justly.

Still, Augustine’s claim that God never deceives anyone by himself(per se ipsum) seems in tension with my insistence that in cases ofdivinely (and just state) authorized deception, God (or a just state) isthe true agent or author of deception and the human actor is merelythe instrument. Indeed, following the passage cited above, Augustineexplains that when God permits or commands deception he uses evilmen or evil angels, making them instruments of deception to punishthem—even as he uses their deceptive acts to punish others. Moreover,Augustine’s overarching explanatory strategy in addressing thisportion of ET seems to challenge my claims further. He propounds atheory (ubiquitous in ET) in which better, more perfect stages of virtueunfold and correspond to an increasing spiritual maturity that marksGod’s people and their relation to God over the course of history. Thepre-Christian Jews, he says, operated at a lower level of virtue, onecorresponding to their desire for and God’s promise of an earthlykingdom. Thus, God appropriately permits their deceptive behaviorprecisely because it suits their relatively low level of virtue. While suchstain and pollution are fitting to their spiritual immaturity, suchbehavior, he stresses, is entirely unsuited to Christians and theirhigher level of virtue. While this too might seem to raise difficulties formy argument and challenge my interpretation of QH, reading thispassage as defeating my claims and as best representing Augustine’sthought on the matters with which we are centrally concerned isproblematic in multiple respects.

First, discussing his view of God’s designating “the evil agent” to dohis dirty work—and thus God himself not really being the agent—Augustine draws a parallel: “The judge considers it unworthy of hisoffice and foul to kill the condemned, yet by his command the execu-tioner does it, one who for his lust (cupiditate) was ordained to theoffice . . . one who is able, by his cruelty, to execute even the innocent”(ET 53.2, my emphasis)

This is a vital point. Augustine here parallels God- (or just state–)authorized killers and similarly authorized deceivers, and he claimsthat in both cases evil lust (cupiditate) makes a person fit to be soauthorized and is manifest in his so acting. The killer is so cruel,Augustine says, that he has no regard for the innocent. This seems,however, to contradict the rest of Augustine’s writings wherein well-intentioned men who kill at the command of God or the just state donot act evilly or with evil intention but justly.37 Along with many other

37 That Augustine speaks here of an executioner rather than a soldier is irrelevant forour purposes insofar as both are relevantly similar qua God/state-sponsored killers (see


texts, his letters to Christian soldiers and rulers stipulate that evenChristians can and should engage in just killing and that by doing sothey are not hateful, nor, “by their cruelty,” indifferent to whether theykill the innocent. Further, Augustine so unites deception and killinghere that if one relies on this passage against my claims, taking it tobest represent Augustine’s thought on these matters, then one mustalso prioritize this passage over his standard, very different way oftreating just killing throughout his other texts. (For instance, onewould have to reject his explicit claims that Christians can be soldiers.)

Another significant problem with this passage is that it seemsdirectly to contradict Augustine’s claims elsewhere—particularly hislater writings and his insistence that in God- or just state–authorizeddeception or killing, God or the state is the true agent and the humanactors are merely instruments. Most pointedly, ET’s contention that“God is not a deceiver” sharply contradicts QH’s claim that God is thetrue agent and humans merely instruments in an instance of whatAugustine explicitly recognizes as divinely commanded deception (ET53.2). To be clear, at issue here is deception, not lying. Regardless ofwhether Augustine is bound to regard the ambush as a lie, he doesexplicitly identify the ambush as divinely authored deception. Thus,QH and ET stand in stark opposition on the issue of divinely authoreddeception whether my interpretation of QH as involving lying ispersuasive or not.

One way to resolve these tensions between ET and the rest ofAugustine’s work is to emphasize that both Scriptural incidents in ETare ones in which Augustine views all relevant human parties ashaving evil intentions. Thus, in 1 Kings 22 false prophets lie topower-hungry Ahab and in the Egyptian incident Augustine faults theJews because “they were coveting an earthly kingdom” and explainsthat God “permitted them [to take the booty] on account of their lust(cupiditate)” (emphasis mine, ET 53.2). In contrast, in QH 6.10, thehuman actors of Joshua 8 are defended as just—their intentions arenot impugned—and God himself commands them to deceive. Perhapsin virtue of the different intentions of the human agents, or in virtueof the difference between God permitting and commanding something,the situations elicit different pronouncements: God engages in one kindof deception, but not another.

Most fundamentally, these various points of divergence and, perhaps,outright contradiction are, I think, rooted in the particular understand-

n.19 above and DCD 1.21). Indeed, the executioner’s killing presumably could be lesspotentially objectionable because the executioner kills only those tried and found guiltywhereas soldiers kill potentially innocent combatants—for instance, slaves sent to battlein their master’s stead—irrespective of their personal guilt. Swift 1973 explores suchissues further.

Just Lies 681

ing of the agent–instrument distinction that ET formulates—one thathas very little in common with that articulated in DCD, QH, andelsewhere. In ET’s version, a God- or state-ordained killer is inherentlymarked by a soul so lust filled as to delight in killing the innocent, an“instrument” can be polluted or punished just in virtue of his instru-mental function, the act belongs almost entirely to the instrument (or atleast much more to the instrument than the agent), and the agent, Godhimself, is only very distantly connected to the act, if not entirelyshielded from it by the human instrument. All of this is in sharp contrastto the agent–instrument conception that we have seen marks QH, DCD,and other later texts where the agent, not the instrument, is mostintimately connected to the action—where the human is merely a vesselfor an action that properly belongs to and is most closely connected withGod. It is especially noteworthy in these respects that aside from theexecutioner example, the other example Augustine adduces in ET is onein which someone uses an animal to tear a thief to pieces for stealing.The visceral, horrifying image of a human with tooth and claw tearinganother live human to pieces drives the reader to foreground andattribute the action to the beastly instrument and to downplay theinvolvement of the human agent.38 With the example, Augustine simul-taneously maximizes the connection between the beastly instrument andthe action, while minimizing the connection between the action and thehuman agent. Indeed, his example and treatment create and highlighta gulf of separation between agent and act while propelling theinstrument forward as the act’s true originator: the instrument essen-tially becomes the “agent” and the erstwhile agent all but disappears. InDCD and QH, in contrast, the instrument is merely the vessel or tool ofthe agent’s action, a “sword in its user’s hands,” not a wild beast tearinga person to pieces.

Additional differences further distinguish ET from QH in particularand even more deeply problematize efforts to read the apparent claimsof the former into the latter. In QH, consideration of Joshua’s ambushleads directly and straightforwardly to consideration of the circum-stances under which the reader should undertake such things. Augus-tine invites his audience in and connects the text’s narrative toquestions that are, in principle, live for them. In ET, however, Augus-tine distances the reader from any such identification with or connec-tion to the events the texts recount: the instruments and theiractivities, the “thieving Jews” and lying prophets, testify to an imma-ture ethical stage that the believer has no direct connection to. Incontrast, in QH, Joshua’s particular experience is not relegated to an

38 This is so even if we account for the fact that Augustine’s audience would (likely)not find the image of beast tearing a thief to pieces as horrifying as we do.


ethically irrelevant era but treated as germane to the believer’s life ashe or she is encouraged to identify with the instrument, Joshua, and toconsider the possibility of being likewise used. Moreover, in ET’s“stages of moral growth” narrative, Augustine has a ready-made scriptfor dispensing with Old Testament “problems” of the sort one couldimagine Joshua’s ambush to be. Augustine could have easily recurredto that script in treating Joshua’s ambush. He does not.39 Such areading, as we have seen, runs counter to the way in which QH andAugustine actually proceed—the way Augustine engages, and invitesus to engage, Joshua’s ambush.

The very different origins, purposes, and genres of these texts mayfinally help to account for their many divergences. ET was writtenbetween 388 and 396 C.E. whereas QH was written much later, in 419C.E., leaving ample time for these aspects of Augustine’s thoughtto have undergone transformation. Moreover, Augustine explains inRetractationes (R) that ET was written very early in his Christian life,prior to his becoming a bishop, as a kind of “FAQ” list for lay Christianswho would “interrogate” him whenever they saw him “unoccupied” (R1.26.1). In contrast, QH was written as a formal Scriptural commen-tary. ET was composed in an ad hoc fashion and merely as a startingpoint for those who could turn to Augustine himself or a lengthierwork, like QH, for further teaching. Given Augustine’s goal in ET ofexplaining to the unlearned who were “always interrogating him” thatGod does not sin, it seems easier and less risky for him simply to saythat God does not deceive than to explain how God does deceivewithout sinning (R 1.26.1).40 If ET and QH cannot otherwise bereconciled, these considerations strongly argue that QH representsAugustine’s considered position on this matter better than ET. None-theless, even if one rejects my claim that Augustine regards God as thetrue agent of the deceiving and lying he commands and prioritizes ETover QH and other texts, ET still endorses many of my central

39 Moreover, even if we can imaginatively reconstruct a reading in which he does so,QH and its way of proceeding, upon which I stake some of my claims, remains. Achallenge to my claims from this direction would need, among other things, to show howthe reconstruction diminishes or undermines what QH actually says, why we shouldprioritize the reconstruction, and why we should prioritize ET.

40 Further, when Augustine says in ET that God is not the agent of deception becausehe does not deceive “per se ipsum” but authorizes or commands others to do so, he doesnot fully explain what he means (for example, what the differences are between God’scommanding or intending a deception and his deceiving “per se ipsum;” what the relationis between God’s doing something “per se ipsum” and through humans). If Augustinemeans that God never deceives without using a human instrument but is nonethelessfully and exclusively the act’s agent, then ET’s challenges are less significant. Becausethat interpretation seems questionable, however, and in order to address the morestrenuous challenge to my argument I have assumed that this is not his meaning.

Just Lies 683

interpretive claims—that God does command some to deceive, in-cluding even those “closer to the best virtue,” that God’s doing so is“excellent,” and that a person’s obedience to that command ispraiseworthy—and it raises significant challenges for many standardinterpretations of Augustine’s treatment of lying.

6. Weaver’s Insufficient Answer

Having addressed ET’s ostensible challenge, I now show how AlainEpp Weaver’s efforts to resolve the apparent tensions in Augustine’streatments of lying and of private and public killing fall short. This isworthwhile not only because Weaver’s represents a rival effort toresolve this issue but also because doing so illustrates the importanceof the conceptual distinctions I have introduced.

In his 2001 article, Weaver attempts to address the apparent ten-sions in Augustine’s treatments of lying and killing. There, Weaverprimarily explores the relationship between private lying and just warkilling. He problematically compares private lying to public killing anddoes so without seeming to acknowledge or to take into account that heis doing so. Specifically, he neglects to examine the significance ofAugustine’s differing treatments of private killing and just war killingfor Augustine’s treatment of lying, how Augustine’s treatment of lyingmight reshape our understanding of Augustine’s treatment of killingand the possibility of differentiating between public and private lying.

According to Weaver, for Augustine just war is distinguished fromprivate killing by virtue of institutional context and intention. WhileWeaver claims that private killing entails evil intention, he does notexplore how this claim relates to Augustine’s treatment of just warkilling (Weaver 2001, 68). In other words, he does not ask why just warkilling does not likewise entail evil intention, if it does not; or why, ifjust war killing does entail evil intention, it is nonetheless permitted.Instead, paralleling lying and private killing, he contends that, “likeunjustifiable [that is, private] killing, lying differs from taking life inwar in two respects [institutional context and intention]” (Weaver2001, 68). However, he does not explain the alleged differences betweenjust war and apparently well-intentioned private killing with respect tointention and permissibility, and thus he cannot explain why August-ine treats lying and killing differently or why Augustine’s doing so isnot inconsistent. While Weaver rightly recognizes that “love cannotmake an utterance that arises from a divided heart impelled by the willto deceive anything other than a lie,” he neglects to appreciate thesignificance and implications of the corollary fact that neither can lovemake a private citizen’s killing an assailant to rescue an innocentneighbor anything other than murder (Weaver 2001, 68). As we have


seen, for Augustine, all private killing is murder and private lying is,in the relevant sense, just like private killing: both are absolutelyprohibited and the very act of private killing or private lying eitherentails evil intentions or makes one’s intentions irrelevant to thekilling’s or lying’s moral significance. Yet, if God or just state sponsor-ship of killing can nonetheless make killing permissible and obligatory,consistency dictates that God or just state sponsorship of lying can dothe same for lying. As I noted earlier, resisting this claim requiresshowing, among other things, some relevant difference in the respec-tive reasons why apparently well-intentioned private killing andprivate lying are both prohibited.

Instead, Weaver claims that Augustine’s different treatments oflying and just war killing are consistent because “lying is a privatepractice whereas the taking of life in a just war has an institutionalcontext” (Weaver 2001, 68). But, quite unfortunately, lying is not a“private practice”—certainly not an exclusively private practice.Indeed, Weaver himself actually mentions several instances of lies ininstitutional contexts: the “systematic lies of modern warfare” and“political lies” (Weaver 2001, 67). From Augustine’s silence on publiclies in CM and DM, one cannot simply assume that he thinks thatlies cannot have an institutional context like that of just war killing.Thus, his claim that, “Augustine . . . believed that the lie had novalid context [within political institutions],” is unsubstantiated—bothwithin his article and in Augustine’s corpus (Weaver 2001, 68).41

41 Without further explanation, Weaver cites Robert Dodaro (1994) and Augustine’sEpistulae 189.6, to support the different claim that Augustine “would have condemned thesystematic lies of modern warfare” (Weaver 2001, 67, my emphasis). Augustine condemnspolitical lies told for unjust ends in DCD, and for Dodaro the “systematic lies of warfare”refers to ideological media coverage, false casualty reporting, and so on. That Augustinecondemns these lies counts no more against his endorsement of just state–sponsored lies,than his rejection of hate-driven, state-sponsored killing counts against his support of justwar killing. Epistulae 189 refers to faith being pledged to the enemy: “When faith has beenpledged (fides promittitur), even to enemies against whom war is waged, it must be kept.”This does not, however, count against the possibility of Augustine endorsing juststate–sponsored lying. “Pledges of faith” are treaties, rules of engagement, and so on, anddeception involving “pledges of faith” is obviously distinct from the lies of the battlefield orespionage. ET, for example, helps clarify the term and concept: “The enemy can frequentlybe deceived unjustly—for instance, when some pact, called a truce, is made for a temporarypeace, and faith is not kept (servatur fides)” (ET 53.1). (Note also: that the enemy can be“unjustly deceived” suggests that they can be justly deceived.) Epistulae 189 has to do withsetting limits on the extent and character of force used against the enemy, anddistinguishing when force and, I would add, deception become wrong. Indeed, Augustineintroduces the point Weaver cites by claiming that it is wrong to live in a way that ignoresthe sinfulness—and thus the duty to violence and deception—of this age: “We ought notbefore the eschaton wish to live with the holy and just alone [and therefore neglect our dutyto wage war . . .]” (Epistulae 189.5).

Just Lies 685

Because Weaver does not distinguish between public and privatelying and assumes all lying is private, he ends up comparing Augus-tine on just war killing to Augustine on private lying. DefendingAugustine against charges of inconsistency, however, requires one toformulate the charge correctly: one must consider all the variousrelations among Augustine’s treatments of lying and killing in boththeir public and private modes. In particular, one must examine andcompare his treatments of public killing and public lying—whichrequires detailing and defending, as I have done, what one thinks histreatment of public lying is or would be. Weaver, however, neglectspublic lying, focusing on the possibility of inconsistency betweenAugustine’s treatments of public killing and private lying.

Additionally, Weaver’s attempt to answer even his inaccuratelyformulated charge of inconsistency falls short. Specifically, he claimsthat Augustine’s belief that God is love and truth explains and justifiesthe differences in his treatments of killing and private lying. Weavercontends that Augustine believes that God is truth and does not lie,and thus that “God’s truth, accordingly, cannot be communicatedthrough a lie. . . . What God ‘cannot’ do (lie), humans are forbidden todo” (Weaver 2001, 69). In contrast, he says, for Augustine, since Godcan and does use violence, since his love can take that form, humanscan use violence as well. Weaver’s argument here rests on two assump-tions: that for Augustine (a) what God cannot or will not do, humanscannot or should not do and that this grounds God’s prohibitions andpermissions in the cases of killing and lying; and that (b) God does notdeceive or lie, or ask humans to deceive or lie.

Weaver, however, gives no evidence that (a), as he formulates andapplies it, is Augustine’s principle. Often it seems that Augustinethinks humans should do or not do D because God commands humansto do or not do D—and that God’s reasons for so commanding orprohibiting are frequently his own (recall, for example, Augustine’sremark in DCD that God is just, for “God himself [is] the font ofjustice”) (DCD 1.21). Additionally, Weaver does not explain why theseclaims about God’s truth and love, respectively, result in the particular,divergent judgments that he says they do for Augustine. In fact, ratherthan answering his version of the charge of inconsistency, Weaver hassimply pushed the question another step back: If the commandedslaughter of children in the Old Testament or God’s hatred of Esau orGod’s damning people can all be, as Augustine thought, consistent withGod’s love, why and how did Augustine think that deception or lyingcould not be consistent with God’s truth? Why can God’s love but notGod’s truth take such a variety of forms? Why did Augustine thinkviolence and apparent hate but not deception consistent with God’sjustice, goodness and love?


Moreover, even if Weaver’s reasons were Augustine’s, they wouldactually undermine Augustine’s ability to explain why he is not incon-sistent in forbidding private killing but permitting public killing. The“institutional context” or “right authority” criterion as Weaver formu-lates it might account for the divergent pronouncements on private andpublic killing, but Weaver’s theological criterion makes that institu-tional criterion seem arbitrary: love seems as much the intention inprivate as in state-sponsored third-party defense. If Weaver appeals toinstitutional context, he undermines the rejection of just state-sponsored lying; if he emphasizes the theological reasons he advanceson Augustine’s behalf, he obscures Augustine’s distinctions betweenjust state–sponsored killing and private killing for third parties. Ineither case, Weaver’s Augustine seems inconsistent.

With respect to (b), while Augustine clearly thought God wouldnever lie or deceive about his own identity or in matters pertaining tomorals, salvation, or dogma, it is not clear, as we have seen, that hethought God would never lie or deceive at all. Moreover, it is clear, evenin ET, that he thought God did command humans to deceive—which,on my explanation of why Augustine thinks public killing and publiclying are permissible, would make God himself the true agent of thedeception and those he commanded merely the instruments thereof.

7. Objections and Responses

The remainder of this article addresses four objections that might beraised against my claims.42 The first objection builds upon an article byPaul Griffiths that offers a theological explanation of Augustine’sprohibition of lying that might seem to challenge my argument (Grif-fiths 1999).

For Griffiths, Augustine’s rejection of lying is rooted in his convictionthat speech is a gift of God, given “to permit the communication to

42 An objection I cannot fully treat claims that my argument’s logic opens up thepossibility of Augustine’s having to endorse, for example, just state–sponsored adultery.There are at least three responses. One would claim that Augustine thinks that adulteryis permissible in certain circumstance—as one text might seem to suggest (Lord’sSermon on the Mount, 1.16.50 and 1.12.36, cited in von Heyking 2001, 120–21). A secondresponse would build on the claims of this paper and show how adultery and its evil arerelevantly different from killing or lying in a way that killing and lying are not differentfrom one another. This response could focus on the sacred, covenantal character of theobligations that are violated in adultery or argue that for Augustine the connectionbetween sex and the soul is qualitatively different from the relationship between the souland killing or lying. Or, one could argue that neither God nor the state can ever be thetrue agents of sexual acts. Another response might revise Augustine’s claims aboutkilling and lying and distinguish between killing and deception (morally neutral activi-ties), on the one hand, and murder and lying (morally evil activities), on the other hand.Adultery would be an unjust species of sex.

Just Lies 687

others of what is in our minds, and to do this by reflecting . . . ourthought” (Griffiths 1999, 15). Lying thus plunges one into self-contradictory incoherence: the lie depends for its existence on the verygift of speech that it attempts to reject—it repudiates the conditions ofits own possibility (Griffiths 1999, 3, 22). As he sees it, for Augustine,“the attempt to repudiate God’s gift evident in the lie is intrinsicallyand exclusively sinful” and this grounds its absolute prohibition (Grif-fiths 1999, 22). Based on Griffiths’s account, one might think thatAugustine could never allow for the possibility of a just lie, that hewould find the very notion incoherent. Yet even if we assume thatGriffiths’s formulations of Augustine’s perspective are accurate, Grif-fiths’s argument or some revised version of it need not stand in tensionwith my claims.43

Indeed, thinking with Griffiths that Augustine views lying by humanagents as intrinsically sinful actually coheres well with and supportsmy argument. Recall that Augustine absolutely prohibits all killingand lying by human agents. What makes certain killings and liespermissible, I have argued, is precisely that the human doing thekilling or lying is not really the true agent, but only the instrument; itis God who is the true agent of this activity. Indeed, if we suppose that,for whatever reason (including the one Griffiths sketches), Augustinesees lying and killing as intrinsically sinful for human agents, thathelps explain both his absolute prohibition and why the agent–instrument distinction—in which God is the true agent of thisactivity—is what renders lying and killing permissible. To be clear,Griffiths and I are united in rejecting the notion that Augustinepermits lying on any consequentialist grounds. His correct insistence

43 Actually, it is debatable how accurately Griffiths’s account here does articulateAugustine’s perspective. For example, Griffiths references Enchiridion 22 to substantiatehis claim that for Augustine speech is given “to permit the communication to others ofwhat is in our minds, and to do this by reflecting . . . our thought” (Griffiths 1999, 15).In Enchiridion 22, Augustine claims that words were given not to enable deception butto enable humans to reveal their minds. It seems inadvisable, however, to see thisremark as adequately expressing Augustine’s complex understanding of speech’s pur-pose(s). Enchiridion is a brief tract on Christianity written to answer an individual’sspecific questions: it is not Augustine’s most detailed or precise formulation on lying orsignification. While the purpose of speech is not deception, without more argumentationthan Griffiths provides, it is not clear that Augustine understands the purpose of humanspeech to consist precisely in the accurate revelation of the contents of one’s mind.Moreover, as I previously noted, in the skeptical-friend case, counter to what Griffiths’saccount would entail, Augustine does not condemn the one who falsely signifies in orderto help someone find the right path. Also, Augustine understands jokes and fictionalstories to involve something other than “faithfully and accurately . . . [uttering] ourmind”—he knows well that Jesus used parables precisely to conceal his mind (but notmislead about its contents) from certain auditors—yet Augustine does not regard suchactivities as contrary to speech’s purpose (Griffiths 1999, 16).


that, for Augustine, no good intentions or consequentialist consider-ations justify a person’s lying harmonizes perfectly with my claim thatlying and killing are never permissible on those grounds, but onlywhen and because one is functioning as God’s instrument (Griffiths1999, 23, 27).

One might nonetheless claim that Griffiths’s account of why Augus-tine thinks lying is intrinsically wrong for humans somehow entailsthat Augustine must also think that lying is wrong for God—and thusthat my claims are unsatisfactory on that count. This is not the case.Even on Griffiths’s formulation, which focuses on the notion of God as“Giver” and speech as “gift,” it follows that the Giver need not (andperhaps should not) be bound in his own action by the rules and logicgoverning the way in which his recipients are to employ his gifts. It isnot the gift of human signification (with its logic, purpose, and limits)that enables or governs God’s signification; rather, God’s ability tosignify is the source and origin of the gift of human signification. Thelatter may reflect or participate in the former, but what is true ornecessary about the limits and ends of human signification need not betrue or necessary about God’s. God, “in whom there is no iniquity andwho knows what ought to be done to whom,” perfectly knows how hissignification is justly to be used, and his determinations of whatconstitutes just signification at the derivative level of human signifi-cation need not be identical to what constitutes just signification forhim (QH 6.10). In short, the possibilities and purposes God intends andenables for humans with his gifts need not be those that constrain him.

Moreover, we must recall that, for Augustine, God is “the fount ofjustice”—he can do no wrong, and his action, even his lying, is neces-sarily just.44 Indeed, even for Griffiths, the most fundamental reasonwhy Augustine regards lying as sinful is that it is an act of disobedienceto God—a repudiation of God’s gift (Griffiths 1999, 22). Thus, Griffith’saccount, even if it is correct, does not show that Augustine must rejectthe possibility of God’s telling a lie.

44 And see also CF 22.72–78. Griffiths himself acknowledges this, noting that Augus-tine’s prohibition of lying involves a “species of divine-command ethic” (Griffiths 1999,23). We might say that Augustine seems to hold that the power of God’s goodness is suchthat his killing is consistent with his being Life; his hating is consistent with his beingLove; and his lying is consistent with his being Truth. It seems Augustine thinks thatGod’s killing, hating, or lying, at some deeper level, honor and manifest his Love, Life,and Truth. This need not imply that God’s actions are not genuinely acts of killing,hating, and lying, but rather, that, somehow, they honor what they appear to violate—analogously, perhaps, to the way in which (as some have it) the execution of a murdererwhile appearing to devalue human life actually honors and manifests a deep commit-ment to its value. Augustine’s “voluntarism,” then, is closer to that articulated in RobertAdams’s recent work than that of, for instance, John Duns Scotus (Adams 1999).

Just Lies 689

A second objection cites as problematic Augustine’s endorsement ofstate-sponsored, church-encouraged religious persecution in cases ofheresy, yet his prohibition in CM of church-sponsored lying to combatheretics. This difference, the objection runs, shows that killing andlying are altogether different kinds of acts for Augustine, and hispermitting state-sponsored, church-encouraged religious violence butnot church-sponsored lying shows that his prohibition against lying isabsolute, even with respect to just state–sponsored lying. Augustine,however, no more endorses church-sponsored violence than he endorseschurch-sponsored lying, and given his commitments, there is nothinginconsistent about his claiming that certain activities are appropriatelysponsored by the state but not by the church. Revising the objectionone could ask about Augustine’s apparent endorsement of churchadvocacy for state-sponsored religious violence in relation to what hethinks the church’s stance should be toward state-sponsored lying forheresy suppression. Augustine, however, does not say what he thinksthat stance should be, and one would need to reconstruct his likelystance for the objection to be cogent.45 In any case, just as in hisview personal self-defense is incongruous with the Christian duty tomartyrdom yet government-sponsored just war and church advocacyfor state violence against heretics are permitted and even obligatory,likewise there is no inconsistency in his prohibition of church-sponsored lying in relation to his approval of just state–sponsoredlying—the cases and goods at stake in each are sufficiently different inhis eyes to merit different responses.

The third objection insists that verbal communication is necessary toconstitute an Augustinian lie and thus that non-verbal instances offalse signification with will-to-deceive are not Augustinian lies. Givenwhat we have already seen, treating this objection, which bears espe-cially on my interpretation of QH, could seem tedious, but Griffiths, forexample, in his well-known book on Augustine and lying at one pointsays that, for Augustine:

Nonverbal actions cannot be lies . . . It is possible to make public one’sthought without words (by gesture and other nonverbal sign), and it is

45 Assuming Augustine would reject church advocacy of state-sponsored lying forheresy suppression, one could still respond that he only endorses state-sponsored,church-advocated religious violence in cases of heresy where the violence is directed atsuppressing the heresy and reintegrating the heretics. While for Augustine violence inthis case is consistent with the church’s witness and ends, since the battle against heresyand schism is precisely to preserve and protect truth, for the church to combat heresy byadvocating state-sponsored lying instead of or in addition to state-sponsored violencewould be self-defeating: it would make the church guilty of the heretic’s crime and wouldconstitute an abandonment of the very truth it sought to defend. Likewise, certain actsof self-defense undermine the goods realized in martyrdom.


therefore also possible to choose to misrepresent what one thinks in theseways. But such cases lie outside Augustine’s definition. He is, for themost part, concerned only with speech (or writing). He does say asalready noted that you can lie with nonverbal signifiers. But once havingsaid so, he scarcely returns to such cases, and I follow him in removingthem from further consideration. In discussing the lie I’ll be discussingonly verbal acts. Whether the definition can be extended to cover non-verbal acts, and what the problems are in doing so—these are interestingquestions, but not the questions of this book [Griffiths 2004, 33].46

False signification, however, occurs when someone “has one thing inmind and signifies the other with words or whatever kind of signs” andAugustine’s notion of what counts as signification is very expansive(emphasis mine, DM 3.3). While many of Augustine’s examples of lyingin DM and CM involve verbal significations, he never says that lyingmust involve verbal significations or that non-verbal significationscannot be lies. The claim that, “for Augustine, you lie if and only if you[verbally] speak” is incorrect (emphasis mine, Griffiths 2004, 29; 31).The duplicity Griffiths rightly thinks Augustine objects to in writing orverbal speech is present precisely because and insofar as that writingor verbal speech signifies.

Von Heyking’s understanding of Augustine on lying and his claimthat for Augustine “lying is not only permissible in certain circum-stances, but also required,” pose a fourth objection (von Heyking 2001,118). In response, I briefly show both the problems with his claims andhow they significantly differ from my own.

Von Heyking claims that in DM “Augustine provides some excep-tions to [the] general prohibition [against lying] that actually fulfill theobligation to love God” (von Heyking 2001, 117). Specifically, he saysthat Augustine allows for lying in cases in which: an innocent thirdparty is in danger; a person is “of such vicious . . . disposition that that

46 It is one thing for Griffiths himself to define a lie as necessarily verbal and putaside other cases, another for him to claim this definition as Augustine’s. It is difficultto understand how Griffiths moves from, “Nonverbal actions cannot be lies” and “such[nonverbal] cases lie outside Augustine’s definition,” to “he does say . . . you can lie withnonverbal signifiers,” to rescinding from further considering the matter. In particular,the readiness with which Griffiths discards this facet of Augustine’s thought on lying ispuzzling in view of his unswerving commitment to the text (as he understands it) whenit comes to what he takes to be Augustine’s categorical prohibition of lying. As I read it,Griffiths’s earlier work is actually at odds with his claims here (Griffiths 1999, 3–13).Kemp and Sullivan 1993 also claim that Augustine says lies must be verbal:“Augustine . . . define[s] a lie as a locution . . . ” (153, my emphasis). Their supportingcitation is: “‘Falsa vocis significatio’ . . . (Contra Mendacium, 26, DM 4)” (168). Yetneither that phrase nor any form of it are present in CM or DM. No form of “vox” is usedin CM 12.26 or DM 3.4–5.5 and “significatio” in any form is absent from DM 3.4. Theirarticle provides no bibliographic information on which Latin edition(s) they use.

Just Lies 691

person is incapable of acting virtuously;” or “a stronger third partyconsents to bear the burden of being attacked [in place of a weakerparty being sought]” (von Heyking 2001, 117, 118, 120). He also makesthe stronger assertion that Augustine claims that “it is actually unjustnot to lie to protect another in cases where someone wishes to commitan injustice against another” and “that lying is necessary” when oneencounters a person incapable of acting virtuously (emphasis mine, vonHeyking 2001, 117–18). Augustine, however, introduces no exception tohis prohibition of lying in DM. Even in the cases Augustine claims aremost extreme, that in which a man is threatened with being raped oris threatened with being forced to eat feces, he nonetheless unequivo-cally prohibits lying (DM 9.15–16 introduces the question, and 19.40–21.42 answers it).

If one does not read DM carefully, one can wrongly think thatAugustine is endorsing an objection or exception to his prohibitionwhen he is merely presenting the most persuasive case for it, a casehe will later reject. This is DM’s dialectical style and while vonHeyking notes this stylistic feature, in this respect he does notread DM accordingly (von Heyking 2001, 115–16). Repeatedly, hecites an anticipated objection as representing Augustine’s positionwithout noting that Augustine later rejects its validity. Readingsomething like the following, he thinks that Augustine is introducingan exception:

One therefore must conclude that someone should not by his own sinevade another’s sins, whatever they are, excepting those that make theone against whom they are committed impure. . . . Those, however, whichcommitted against a man make him impure, we ought to avoid even byour sin; and for this reason those things must not be called sins, which aredone so that this impurity might be avoided [DM 9.15, my emphasis].47

Out of context, it does seem that Augustine is introducing an exception:to avoid bodily defilement, one may lie. However, offering his conclu-sion later, Augustine reiterates the strongest objection to an absoluteprohibition of lying that he can imagine (lying to avoid rape andsimilar defilement), and he immediately indicates that he rejects thatobjection:

And yet if anyone . . . [love] truth . . . he should put . . . the truthfulbeauty of honesty . . . before all . . . [Even] if someone lies such thathe is believed to the disadvantage and harm of no one, [and] withadded . . . intention of preserving . . . bodily purity; nevertheless, faith isviolated. . . . We are therefore compelled . . . to value perfect faith even

47 Even here though, in opposition to von Heyking’s claims, Augustine is clear thatone should not lie to save another from things like murder or torture.


above purity of body . . . Much more must chastity of the mind bepreserved [than chastity of body]. . . . It is thus manifest, everythinghaving been discussed . . . that one must never lie at all [DM 20.41–21.42, my emphasis].

Augustine here rejects all previous ostensible exceptions to his pro-hibition. The final sentence clarifies that the treatise’s whole point,“all being discussed,” is that (private) lying is prohibited withoutexception. Concluding the penultimate paragraph, after detailingseven kinds of lies, all of which he prohibits, Augustine reiteratesthat, even including lies told to avoid defilement, there are no excep-tions to the prohibition:

Nor should there be lying of the eighth sort [lies told to avoid defilement-]. . . . Each one sins less when he lies, the closer the lie is to the eighthsort, and sins more the closer it is to first. But whoever should think thatthere is any kind of lie that is not a sin will deceive himself shamefully[DM 21.42, my emphasis].

Augustine does not permit lies in the cases von Heyking claims hedoes, all of which are encompassed among the eight types that Augus-tine presents. (Importantly, Augustine does not mention among thoseeight types, and does not here prohibit, God- or just state–authorizedlies.) Von Heyking’s claims are fundamentally different from my own:I have argued that Augustine does prohibit private lying absolutely, inthe same way that he prohibits private killing, and that he permitslying only when God or the justly acting state is the true agent—not incases of the sort that von Heyking details and not for the sorts ofreasons von Heyking identifies.

8. Conclusion: New Alliances, New Questions

In closing, it is worth briefly noting that my argument incidentallybears on one of the primary aims of Weaver’s aforementioned article.One of the main goals of that article’s interpretive efforts, a goal Weaversurely shares with others, was to short-circuit Augustinian criticisms ofpacifism and to challenge Augustinian endorsement of just war killing.Specifically, Weaver had hoped to challenge Augustinian critics ofYoderian pacifism by showing that the exceptionless character of Augus-tine’s prohibition against lying mirrored the exceptionless character ofJohn Howard Yoder’s pacifism. Insofar as Augustinians criticized theuncompromising, categorical character of Yoder’s pacifism as naivelyignoring the demands of love and justice in a sinful world, the Yoderiancould point to the equally uncompromising and otherworldly characterof Augustine’s ethics of lying, showing Augustinians that the criticism

Just Lies 693

applied to them as well.48 Shown the parallel between Augustine on lyingand Yoder on killing and faced with the choice between rejectingAugustine’s prohibition of lying or ceasing the attack on Yoder’s paci-fism, the Augustinian would opt for the latter—or find him or herself inan uncomfortable position. For Weaver’s efforts to succeed, requires,however, that lying be only “a private practice” for Augustine (or elsethat Augustine prohibit God- or just state–sponsored lies) (Weaver 2001,68). It requires that Augustine not make a distinction between privateand God- or just state–sponsored lying—in short, that he not allow fora just public lie. Insofar as Augustine does make or imply such adistinction, the sought-after parallel with Yoder disintegrates. As wehave seen, Augustine’s prohibition against private lying, like his prohi-bition against private killing, does not excuse Christians from God- orjust state–sponsored activity. On the contrary, as an instrument of Godor the just state, a Christian has a duty to fight and lie. Thus,Augustine’s prohibition against private lying does not lend the desiredsupport to Yoderian pacifism—which governs not only private activitybut public activity as well. Indeed, Augustine would object to what hewould consider the lack of eschatological patience manifest in claimingthat Christian duties of martyrdom and truth-telling exempt one from,rather than propel one into, Christian duties of just public killing andjust public lying. He would consider it eschatologically impatient not tohope but to demand that even now the conditions that make publickilling and lying possible—and necessary—would fall away. Nonethe-less, in the absoluteness of Augustine’s prohibition of private killing,Yoderians and other pacifists can find significant and, perhaps, over-looked common ground with Augustine and some of his most faithfulfollowers. This is no small thing, and it is partly thanks to Weaver’sefforts that this point comes into focus.

For those concerned about the apparent role-specific character ofAugustine’s ethics of lying and killing, it is important to recall that statesponsorship of these activities is necessary but not sufficient to renderthem just: the sponsoring state must have upright intentions for its lyingand killing to count as just. Indeed, its intentions must be upright beforeGod himself, for it is not finally the state, but God who is supposed to bethe true agent of the action. Its actions, then, can only count as fully justinsofar as its intentions—and the actions themselves—can honestly beseen as attributable to God, as representing, in some fragmented butnonetheless genuine way, his goodness, justice, and love as revealed inJesus and Christian Scripture.49 The state thus stands under the

48 For further summary of these aspects of Weaver’s argument, see Davis 2001, 79.49 Determining which criteria must be filled for a state to count for Augustine as

acting justly before God in such matters—and so mediating some of God’s authority—is


judgment of God, Scripture, and God’s people—its authority a trust and,like the question of its justice, a matter for the church to discern. I do notpretend that this answers all or even the deepest questions of thosewhom this role-specific ethic troubles: it certainly does not answer mine.We cannot, however, let such discomfort lead us to ignore or conceal thisfeature of Augustine’s thought. Whether, finally, this aspect of his ethicsor even his prohibitions of private lying and private killing might also onAugustinian grounds be called into question, that too is a magna—evenmaior—quaestio, but one for another time. For now, however, there is alesson in this for those who would claim Augustine’s legacy. In pronounc-ing a state’s intentions in war or lying just, their standards must beuncompromising. In so doing, they are, Augustine says, proclaimingbefore the world who God is. In this regard, Augustine has no patiencefor liars.50

CF Contra Faustum ManichaeumCM Contra mendacium ad ConsentiumDCD De civitate Dei contra paganosDM De mendacioET De diversis quaestionibus octoginta tribus (Eighty-Three Different

Questions)QH Quaestionum in heptateuchum libri VIIR Retractationes

REFERENCES

Adams, Robert1999 Finite and Infinite Goods. New York: Oxford University Press.

Augustine1891–92 Contra Faustum Manichaeum. 397–98. CSEL, Vol. 25. J. Zycha,

ed. Vienna: F. Tempsky.1895–98 Epistulae. 418. CSEL, Vol. 57. A. Goldbacher, ed. Vienna:

F. Tempsky.

both very important and very complex. It is certainly not a matter that can be addressedin a few paragraphs or a few pages. For now, however, two points are important. First,we should note that the state’s authority is derivative and conditional—there is certainlyno prima facie presumption that the state is acting justly. Second, we need to recognizethat these points are in no way peculiar to the issue of just state–sponsored lying but,instead, are every bit as relevant and important for the case of just state–sponsoredkilling. In other words, these issues concern the determination of the authority andjustice of the state—whether an act of lying or an act of killing is under consideration.

50 I am very grateful to Jeffrey Stout, Eric Gregory, John Bowlin, G. Scott Davis,Stephen Bush, Joseph Claire, Nick Decosimo, the members of Princeton University’s“Religion and Critical Thought Workshop,” and the two anonymous readers from theJournal of Religious Ethics for their thoughtful and helpful comments on drafts of thisarticle.

Just Lies 695

1900 Contra Mendacium ad Consentium. 420. CSEL, Vol. 41.J. Zycha, ed. Prague: F. Tempsky.

1900 De mendacio. 395. CSEL, Vol. 41. J. Zycha, ed. Prague: F.Tempsky.

1955 De civitate Dei contra paganos. 413–26. CCSL, Vols. 47–48, editedby B. Dombard and A. Kalb. Belgium: Brepols.

1958 Quaestionum in heptateuchum libri VII. 419–20. CCSL, Vol. 5,edited by J. Fraipont and D. De Bruyne. Belgium: Brepols.

1962 De doctrina christiana. 396–426. CCSL, Vol. 32, edited byK.D Daur and J. Martin. Belgium: Brepols.

1969 Enchiridion de fide, spe et caritate. 421–22. CCSL, Vol. 46, editedby M.P.J van den Hout, M. Evans, J. Bauer, R. Vander Plaetse,S.D Ruegg, M.V. O’Reilly, and C. Beukers. Belgium: Brepols.

1970 De libero arbitrio. 388–95. CCSL, Vol. 29, edited by W.M. Greenand K.D. Daur. Belgium: Brepols.

1975 De diversis quaestionibus octoginta tribus (Eighty-Three DifferentQuestions). 388–96. CCSL, Vol. 44, edited by A. Mutzenbecher.Belgium: Brepols.

1984 Retractationes. 426–27. CCSL, Vol. 57, edited by A. Mutzenbecher.Belgium: Brepols.

Carnahan, Kevin2008 “Perturbations of the Soul and Pains of the Body: Augustine on

Evil Suffered and Done in War.” Journal of Religious Ethics 36.2(June): 269–94.

Davis, G. Scott2001 “A Vindication of Theology: A Response to Alain Epp Weaver.”

Journal of Religious Ethics 29.1 (Spring): 79–85.Dodaro, Robert

1994 “Eloquent Lies, Just Wars, and the Politics of Persuasion: ReadingAugustine’s City of God in a ‘Postmodern’ World.” AugustinianStudies 25: 77–138.

Feehan, Thomas D.1988 “Augustine on Lying and Deception.” Augustinian Studies 19:

131–39.1990 “The Morality of Lying in St. Augustine.” Augustinian Studies 21:

67–81.1991 “Augustine’s Own Examples of Lying.” Augustinian Studies 22:

165–90.Griffiths, Paul J.

1999 “The Gift and the Lie: Augustine on Lying.” Communio: Interna-tional Catholic Review 26 (Spring): 5–30.

2004 Lying: An Augustinian Theology of Duplicity. Grand Rapids,Mich.: Brazos Press.


Holmes, John1999 “St. Augustine and the Just War Theory.” In The Augustinian

Tradition, edited by Gareth B. Matthews, 323–44. Berkeley, Calif.:University of California Press.

Johnson, James Turner2001 “Can a Pacifist Have a Conversation with Augustine? ” Journal of

Religious Ethics 29.1 (Spring): 87–93.Kemp, Kenneth W., and Thomas Sullivan

1993 “Speaking Falsely and Telling Lies.” Proceedings of the AmericanCatholic Philosophical Association 67: 151–70.

Lenihan, David A.1988 “The Just War Theory in the Work of Saint Augustine.” Augus-

tinian Studies 19: 37–70.1996 “The Influence of Augustine’s Just War Theory: The Early Middle

Ages.” Augustinian Studies 27: 55–93.Levenick, Christopher D.

2004 “Exceptis Igitur Iocis: Augustine on Lying Joking, and Jesting.”Augustinian Studies 35.2: 304–22.

Markus, Robert A.1970 Saeculum: History and Society in the Theology of St. Augustine.

New York: Cambridge University Press.1983 “Saint Augustine’s Views on the ‘Just War’.” In The Church and

War, edited by W. J. Sheils, 1–13. Oxford: Basil Blackwell.2006 Christianity and the Secular. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of

Notre Dame Press.Smith, J. Warren

2007 “Augustine and the Limits of Preemptive and Preventive War.”Journal of Religious Ethics 35.1 (March): 141–62.

Swift, Louis J.1973 “Augustine on War and Killing: Another View.” The Harvard

Theological Review 66.3 (July): 369–83.Von Heyking, John

2001 Augustine and Politics As Longing in the World. Columbia, Mo.:University of Missouri Press.

Weaver, Alain Epp2001 “Unjust Lies, Just Wars? A Christian Pacifist Conversation with

Augustine.” Journal of Religious Ethics 29.1 (Spring): 51–78.

Just Lies 697

Just Lies: Finding Augustine's Ethics of Public Lying in His Treatments of Lying and Killing

Documents

Transcript of Just Lies: Finding Augustine's Ethics of Public Lying in His Treatments of Lying and Killing